Editorial
Concrete jungle and commercial brainwave
Zoning-based urbanisation is the answer
THE government's reported plan to convert residential areas into semi-commercial zones has a sense of desperation about it -- desperation on the part of city development authorities to succumb to the pressure of unplanned urbanisation at a dizzying pace.
With the capital as the nerve-centre of employment and the livelihood trends in the rural and suburban areas being largely erratic and seasonal, rural-urban migration has increased exponentially over the years. Such a huge influx of rural population has per se translated into more commercial activities than the city can or should accommodate. In fact, commercialisation of physical space threatens to spill into the once-untouched residential areas. This is a menacing trend.
What's more, many an owner of residential plots has found it convenient to rent or lease out their lands for commercial purposes with a view to generating additional income. The concomitant effects have been disastrous on the residential zones: strain on the utility services that resulted in perpetual shortage of water, gas, electricity, etc and increased vehicular movement that translated into traffic tangles for hours on end. The concrete chaos the capital has become today brings into a sharp focus the city planning inadequacies as never before. A Dhaka Master Plan is there which is more obvious in violation than in implementation. Open and green spaces have been taken over by concrete jungles while natural water bodies and floodwater-retaining low lands have been filled up for dubious model town projects. Overall, the capital today sits on the powder keg of a major environmental disaster.
The city fathers, if there were any, pathologically lacked vision. They failed to envisage the growth of the capital. In a least developed country such as ours, rural-urban migration is an unavoidable reality, especially given the deep-rooted city-centricity in our collective psyche. While residents refuse to move away, the entrepreneurs insist on having their industries, factories at the heart of the city, making the capital a veritable concrete hell.
We would like to believe the situation has not yet reached a point of no-return. But it might, very soon. Bursts of emphatic environment-friendly regulatory and enforcement activism with a clear vision may still bring about discipline, liveability and modernity to the city. Unfortunately, the authorities have approached the problem from the wrong end. Instead of semi-commercialisation of residential spaces, they should resort to strict zoning and intra-zoning. For example, as the Dhanmondi Paribesh Unnayan Jote puts it, schools and hospitals need to be set apart from each other and from the noise and air pollution associated with heavily trafficked commercial areas. "Schools in the shadows and waste of trauma centres" make no sense, as commercial operations in residential areas do not. A paradigm shift in the shape of an updated national urbanisation plan is the crying need.
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