Restore Askar Dighi, revive Chattogram’s ecological memory
3 August 2026
In any civilised society, a historic reservoir such as Askar Dighi would have been protected as a public heritage asset. What can we do today?
3 August 2026
The moral calculus of footpath evictions in Dhaka
27 April 2026
The footpaths of Dhaka have again become a political flashpoint of late.
27 April 2026
The promises and perils of a ‘Notun Tej’ in Bangladeshi architecture
28 February 2026
Nearly a hundred years ago, in 1927, something “revolutionary” happened in Stuttgart, Germany.
28 February 2026
What does ‘good history’ look like?
4 November 2025
No historian should be able to answer the question on good history without a degree of trepidation, ambivalence, and uncertainty.
4 November 2025
Bangladesh’s eunomia problem
10 January 2025
In the ancient Greek society, eunomia outlined how things should be in an ideal society.
10 January 2025
Shamsul Wares: A teacher who inspired generations of architects
21 June 2024
Aristotle once said, “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.” Shamsul Wares understood, and hence taught.
21 June 2024
Faujdarhat Cadet College / A post-Partition heritage campus worth preserving
25 May 2024
FCC should not be viewed simply as one of the cadet colleges; it is a heritage campus that can be showcased to the world.
25 May 2024
Understanding Rural Transformation 2.0 in Bangladesh
The traditional mental image of rural Bangladesh that we have is no longer a reality.
5 August 2022
Bangladeshi architecture at the MoMA in New York: What it means for us
The exhibition can serve as a potent reminder for our ethical responsibility to preserve the mid-century buildings that tell our stories.
14 July 2022
There is just one way to save Dhaka
The notoriety of Dhaka’s traffic is now daily news. Civil society members have been venting frustration about this maddening crisis.
24 May 2022
Padma Bridge is a metaphorical countermovement
Recently, on a wintry afternoon, I went to see the Padma Bridge.
3 February 2022
A time travel to Dhaka University’s 2034 convocation
It was Titian Matin’s first return to his native Bangladesh after he won the Nobel Prize in economics for his study of the reciprocal relationship between urban density and economic geography.
27 January 2022
Understanding a freedom fighter’s prison letters
Imprisoned in various torture chambers by the Pakistan Army during Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, Mohiuddin Ahmed, MP, wrote numerous letters to his wife, describing the systemic cruelties of his oppressors.
20 December 2021
Is smart density the way forward for Bangladesh?
Going around in Dhaka could be overwhelming. The city seems overburdened with the impossible weight of people, buildings, vehicles, rickshaws, noise, carbon emission, and nonstop activities.
29 November 2021
Tribute to a true admirer of Bangladesh
Mary Frances Dunham (MFD) arrived in Dhaka on a wintry day in November of 1960. From the window of her room at Hotel Shahbagh, she found ample opportunities to observe the city.
19 October 2021
The delicate work of decolonising knowledge
In recent years, the idea of “decolonising knowledge” (DK)—that knowledge creation must be liberated from West-centric and racialised views of the world—has become a bottom-up intellectual movement in Western academia.
4 October 2021
Could public consciousness of history be a measure of social progress?
For quite some time now, people have been discussing if there are more on-the-ground, inclusive ways to measure a country’s progress, rather than supra-quantitative metrics like GDP.
6 September 2021
Chattogram desperately needs guardian angels
It is impossible these days to not notice Chattogram’s spectacular urban decline. Go around the port city and you will only experience a place plagued by anemia, chaos, a collective greed to commercialise every open space, and overall, a curious lack of aspiration.
18 August 2021
The sociology of eco-grief: Saving Suhrawardy Udyan
Eight years ago, in May, a large crowd staged a sit-in at Gezi Park, next to Taksim Square, Istanbul’s bustling public plaza in the downtown of its European side.
17 May 2021
Your land is my land: Environmental injustice in Bandarban
Land is the closest thing that we know. We cultivate it, build on it, transform it to meet our needs, commercialise it to maximise economic gain, and derive our identities from its widely varying geographic characters.
8 May 2021
How about experiential indicators of wellbeing?
That gross domestic product (GDP) is not a fully satisfying measure of a country’s progress is no longer news. The awareness of GDP’s inadequacies in revealing a nation’s state of development is now almost mainstream.
5 April 2021
Memories, cultural imaginations and Dhaka
How do cities like Dhaka in the throes of frenzied development deal with memories and literary depictions in the process of their transformations?
8 February 2021
How the demolition of a train station changed America
At the heart of the ongoing debate on the potential demolition of TSC and Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka is an old philosophical dilemma—how to progress while retaining some loyalty to history, a key concern of many 20th century philosophers, such as Paul Ricoeur.
28 December 2020
The impending wrecking ball for another Dhaka masterpiece
I do not know how to respond to this barrage of apocalyptic news from Dhaka.
28 November 2020
SDGs, the tyranny of sameness, and a lesson for World Cities Day
Yesterday was World Cities Day (WCD). In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly designated October 31 as WCD to build global awareness of the challenges that cities around the world face.
31 October 2020
SDGs, the tyranny of sameness, and a lesson for World Cities Day
The world’s urban future is full of challenges. But one of the greatest among them is a simple but profound one: the universalisation of urban problems and their generic solutions.
30 October 2020
A looming tragedy in the University of Dhaka’s centennial celebration
Is this the right way to celebrate the centennial of the University of Dhaka in 2021? Like many of my colleagues in Bangladesh and around the world, I was horrified to learn that the university administration has made plans to demolish a 20th century architectural icon inside the university campus to expand and upgrade its insufficient facilities.
26 October 2020