Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder :
The capital city Dhaka has now become unliveable. It is the second worst city among ten unlivable cities in the world. The ten cities are Dakar, Algiriers, Duala, Tripoli, Harare, Port Morsbai, Karachi, Lagos, Dhaka and Damesco. This is the result of the very recent survey conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit. The parameters used in the survey are health, education, stability, culture and environment. These are a few parameters. Other indicators like law and order, traffic management, accidents, movement of old vehicles, use of footpaths and environmental degradation, residential patterns should have been used
Dhaka is expanding at a rapid stride both in area and population wises. It is a capital as well as cosmopolitan city with a population of over 13 million people. Tremendous growth of population in the city due to rural-urban migration and increasing human urge to settle in Dhaka has rendered it difficult for the concerned authorities to mange urban development in the city. More there is floating population. City environment has worsened in Dhaka in the wake of unplanned urbanization. There is hardly any marked development over the years. The authorities are spending lavishly mostly in unproductive sectors without producing any commensurate results. But there is rampant corruption and blame game to account much for fuzzy urban governance.
The city dwellers are not at all satisfied with the performance of the institutions that are responsible for managing metropolitan affairs. The institutions like DCC, RAJUK, and a variety of public utilities have their ‘mode of working’ with ‘set-rules’. Nevertheless governance shortage has become acute with erratic urban management that cannot cater to the needs of a civilized community life at the city point. The environment in the mega city has been vitiated by societal degeneration and escalating tension caused by miscreants and anti-socials. More, intolerable living conditions, unhygienic living conditions in squatter settlements, mushrooming of illegal structures, street accidents and heavy traffic congestion characterize urban life in Dhaka. The city is changing its face rapidly. Dhaka in no way can hold the image of being a green and clean city stumbling onto a bad shape in the process of unplanned urbanization.
As a columnist observed that ‘Dhaka is becoming an urban jungle and everywhere you look there are apartment blocks sprouting like mushrooms. There are fewer houses with gardens. The flats are so close to each other that there is a lack of privacy. The children growing up in the flats do not have any outside access for recreation. No garden, no play ground.’ Unmanageable traffic troubles city dwellers. The traffic system has ‘swallowed millions of bucks and allowed thousand of defective, out modeled buses and other commercial vehicles to ply everywhere and take over the roads in a free style, which were previously occupied by rickshaws in a similar fashion.’ Life has become miserable with load shedding, low pressure of gas and dearth of pure drinking water.
Traffic congestion usually worsens due to the rush of the people in the peak hours – moving to and fro during office and school time, the movement of home bound people to enjoy weekend on Thursday and excessive vehicular movement in the afternoon during the Ramadan. Traffic jam has increased appallingly in the residential areas too which is not a good sign. Now-a- days these areas are throbbing with commercial activities. More there are schools, private universities and colleges, tutorial homes and coaching centers resulting in the overflow of traffic in narrow lanes around these establishments. The parents in these areas that have turned into noisy and busy have to wade through heavy jams of cars, microbus, CNG auto rickshaws and cycle rickshaws to the schools to bring their children back.
A desirable state of urbanization with the overriding considerations of communications, traffic system, and housing and residential patterns has been stressed upon recently by the urban planners. What the city dwellers expect from the city development authority is a well planned city with a systematic clustering of houses in the residential area well connected to the city’s main points – administrative and commercial districts – through linking roads accessible by transports. Distressingly the tremendous growth of urban population in Dhaka has aggravated the crisis of unplanned urbanization in Dhaka with concrete jungles growing thickly all the way around and mushrooming of vehicles plying in a limited number of roads.
The capital city is growing vertically owing to lack of space. The question that may arise is whether RAJUK impose strict building codes to ensure construction of building in a manner that will not create concrete jungles even in narrow lanes inaccessible by bus, trucks, speedy ambulances and fire brigade. A few developers and builders follow ‘technically sound structural designs’. Most of them perhaps do not bother to use ‘correct materials in correct proportions’. But construction of high-rise apartments is going on in an unimaginably fast pace. More, construction materials like sands and iron lying on pavement narrowing down space for the pedestrians to move is simply outrageous. Another formidable problem is solid waste mismanagement. Water logging in during rainy season due to filled up canals and defective drainage system and sewerage is another menace.
Of late there has been an increasing institutional concern for a planned urbanization to make Dhaka suitable for living. RAJUK is supposed to do the needful according to Master Plan. The implementing agency like RAJUK has no adequate infrastructural facilities, manpower and recourses to implement the plan. Besides, co-ordination among the operating agencies is awfully missing.
Dhaka represents a prototype of cosmopolitized urbanization with mechanical revolution in communication, ICT for illustration and strikingly dynamic trends in mobility pattern. At times it is swamped with environmental hazards reflected in conflicting variables -‘converging forces of population,’ technology and a ‘complex eco-system’. All development management with input needs like water, gas power and energy including the environmental attributes of land-use, drainage, solid and liquid wastes, air and adjoining sub-urbs, has turned out to become counterproductive increasing stress on environment.
Developmental trends at the city point emphasizing environmental modifications are rather non-ecological. Man-environment interface in Dhaka in the wake of misdirected urban development that seriously impairs ecology has become a matter of concern to the urban planners.
Dhaka is the capital as well as district and divisional headquarters. The total population of the city is 13 million. Dhaka is a ‘historic city’ with a legendary past ‘running into hundred of years.’ It possesses a distinct ‘cultural identity’ It is the seat of central government growing up as politico-administrative center with the preponderance of political and bureaucratic influences. The city has gradually turned into a hub of cultural and commercial activities. A lot educational institutions scattered here and there represent one of the marked patters of its contemporary phase of urbanization.
Recently growth around Dhaka is extremely unplanned showing a high degree of congestion and overcrowding and malfunctioning of the traffic system. High- rise residential buildings are springing up. Many of such buildings tend to serve commercial purposes. The business activities are found in ‘greater or lesser degree all along the roads’ and pavements but ‘intensify at the cross-roads.’ The city exhibits a very high density ‘human population’ with inadequate space to live and little road infrastructures to move. The rapidly growing urban population in Dhaka and its outskirts is increasing environmental pollution posing ‘problems to human health and threatening the general quality of life’
Environmental degradation stems from rural-urban migration from villages and small market towns with rural characteristics to the metropolitan urban centers full of development activities. All such development activities centering on urbanization come in disharmony with ecological factors leading to ‘gradual degradation of life-support systems including air, water and land’. Enormous population pressure in the core of the city even downtowns aggravates situation.
Drainage is poor. Most drains remain chocked. Flooding and water logging during rainy season very much trouble the pedestrians. Rain water with waste accumulates. resultantly roads, lanes and by-lanes become the ‘pools of water’. ‘Waste-water goes out through open drains which run along the roads.’
Since a couple decades urbanization in Dhaka has assumed ‘greater significance’ influencing ‘growth, distribution, density and structure of population.’ Even then there is no proper system of waste disposal. There is a generation of ‘organic pollution hazard’. The garbage spreads everywhere in the form of heaps all over the filthy city points. Now there are dumping grounds in outer loosely built up communities. Well maintained garbage disposal system is lacking.
The city corporation is collecting garbage through its scanty resources and manpower. The garbage collected from the residents and offices through van is disposed on the dumping ground. In many city-points some amount of solid waste is discharged into the drains or canals causing a great deal of water pollution. The waste from kitchen throwing out of window is emptied into the river through rainwater. Garbage disposal requires responsible urban governance, which is supposed to give immediate action. Haphazard garbage disposal may cause hazardous diseases.
