Editorial
Ugly and Unsafe
Housing is Bangladesh's truly booming sector of economic activity. But the statement needs to be qualified for precision's sake. Overall housing situation in the nation is far from a happy one. Despite the fact of BUET churning out a good crop of fairly competent and even creative architects every year since the late sixties, it is a sad fact that Dhaka's planning and building development has been, all told, bad to indifferent.
Builders and owners, mostly the latter, have played a big role in the bad showing. No doubt about that. Most of Dhaka's house-builders perhaps have yet to know about the profession called architecture. They depend on mason's ideas and know-how, masons who have all but lost touch with the enviable building knowledge and skills of the Pathan, Mughal and earlier times. All this could be held in check and better - functionally and aesthetically - buildings and town layouts could be had to make Dhaka a satisfying and soul filling habitat for the citizens and an eminently attractive city for the people around the globe, if only the successive governments had true and benign, competent and efficient control of the situation. People occupied areas as best as they could by means foul and fair and built on them ugly structures that are hardly serviceable beyond a decade or two.
Considerations of physical and town planning and even of aesthetics apart, many of the thousands of new structures are dangerously weak and unsafe - for the user as well as for those frequenting the vicinity. The Daily Star yesterday reported demolition of 50 unsafe buildings in the last five years. It can be taken as a consolation that there are after all some people or agency conscientious enough to tear down a built-up structure. But a suspicion stares us in the face that buildings may be as many as ten times over that would be needing outright demolition right now. What about those?
The present and immediate past generations of our leaderships in the various fields have all been wanting in one thing - vision. That RAJUK had never had any true vision, was always a fact bare enough for all to see. What is bedevilling Dhaka's existence as well as development as a city is corruption that the set-up is riddled with. If it cannot be rid of corruption and malpractice, government will be well-advised to institute another body to vet housing plans and to monitor the building work as also the performance of the structures after these have been put to use.
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