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
The peculiar global invisibility of 1971
A few years ago, I attended a book launch event for Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram (2013) at the Martin Luther King Jr.
23 December 2016
A monument of Bangladesh and the world
The month of December in Bangladesh is a time of remembrance and reflection. The country's independence in that month in 1971 was followed by a yearning to memorialise the heroism and sacrifice of the freedom fighters.
20 December 2016
Can city design prevent terrorist attacks?
This is one of those questions with a zillion possible answers. An insightful consideration of the question, however, might begin by making a critical distinction between “stopping” and “reducing.” City design alone can't stop terrorism. Terror can strike any city, any time. Recent examples include Istanbul, Paris, Orlando, and Dhaka, among other cities. Terrorists often figure out new ways of breaching security barriers.
26 August 2016
The Banality of Cruelty
As we continue to mourn the helpless victims of the terrorist attack at Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan, I keep looking at
9 July 2016
Armenians in Dhaka
I am intrigued by the common history of massacre that Armenians and Bangladeshis share, and how this history, in many ways, shapes the national personality of these two peoples. More fascinating yet that Dhaka presents a robust Armenian history.
8 June 2016
Goodbye master planning - Hello bottom-up urbanism
Cities are by nature messy. Unless they are Brasilia, Chandigarh or Myanmar's gaudy new capital Naypyidaw, cities grow organically...
28 January 2016
Splitting the capital, saving the country
The idea of dividing the Bangladesh capital into two cities should no longer be considered radical. Indeed, we should begin to incubate this idea in our political and administrative heads.
1 January 2016
Rethinking the roots of Dhaka's traffic congestion
The sooner we realize that Dhaka's traffic congestion is not a problem of transportation engineering alone the better. This is also a problem of
culture. It is much more than a result of broken bureaucracy, inadequate infrastructure, and ad-hoc planning.
21 August 2015
A doctor with a mission
After a hot day in May 2014, it was well past midnight when Aleya Begum brought her two-day-old baby boy to the Chittagong Medical College Hospital (CMCH).
10 June 2015
Why mayors are crucial for the future
The mayoral elections in Dhaka and Chittagong have generated two types of interest.
27 April 2015