Designing Dhaka: A Manifesto for a Better City. By Kazi Khaleed Ashraf. Dhaka: Loka Press, 2012.
Reviewed by:
Fakrul Alam in Jamini
Stuck in one of dysfunctional Dhaka’s horrendous jams, gridlocked by traffic, and with the minutes ticking away, what would you do? A) curse fate that you were born in the city/country; curse the government, and make plans to leave this dystopian nation once for all; b) accept things stoically or even doze off, saying it was all written in the stars and there was nothing that you can do to make things better; c) tell yourself that you are the eternal optimist and things will eventually get better what with new flyovers and all being constructed all over the city, reflecting a government committed to change; d) decide that desperate situations could only be solved by drastic redesigning of the city based not only on utopian vision but knowledge of urban success stories of recent history and proactive planning.
If you are Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, you are going to opt for option d), for as his impressive and important book Designing Dhaka: A Manifesto for a Better City suggests in persuasive detail and with impeccable logic, there is ample scope for utopian thinking and drastic redesigning of the city to make it livable, viable and loveable once again. This is a book based on existing knowledge of recent international experience of coping with rapid urbanization, extensive study of the city’s unique location and physical features, (no doubt) countless hours spent on modeling a comprehensively designed Dhaka, and, most importantly, love of the city. It is also based on knowledge of the city’s past glory, personal experience of its present problems, and a visionary imagination. Ashraf has given us a book to ponder over and be thankful for, but most importantly, to act upon.
Designing Dhaka is premised on the assumption that a newer and re-formed Dhaka is feasible and can be imagined based on radical rethinking, holistic planning and hands-on designing. Throughout the book Ashraf provides evidence that he and his colleagues, associates, fellow-architects, and students in Dhaka and the United States have done extensive “urban design exercises”, carried out workshops, discoursed on the city’s problems and worked on panaceas for its survival continually before he came up with this manifesto. Indeed, this is not the first “manifesto” Ashraf has published and it is certainly not his first attempt to initiate a discourse on re-visioning Dhaka, for as old-time readers of the Daily Star and its now defunct weekly publication Forum will know, he has been tirelessly pursuing his mission to alert us of the way we can rebuild Dhaka and get rid of its immense and seemingly endless problems eventually through willed and transformative action. As he reminds us in the “Prolog” of the book, it is essentially “a collection of propositions that have been generated over twenty years through various efforts and programs, individually and collectively.”
The core of Designing Dhaka consists of a longish essay titled “A New Dhaka is Possible” and a 15 point manifesto made vivid through slide-like visualization as well as a succinct and thoughtfully developed exposition of each one of them. The essay begins by taking into account the 400 year history of the urbanization of Dhaka, noting its ups and downs. It describes the contemporary period of the city’s formation as nothing less than “wild urbanization”. But Ashraf feels that the chaos besetting the burgeoning city so neglected by its official caretakers can and must be solved through first raising and then answering two critical questions: “What does Dhaka want to be? What do we want Dhaka to be?” The solution, he declares with the conviction that comes from total commitment is to come up with “big and bold initiatives and not micro responses.” To be utopian in such cases, he implies, is essential. He quotes very appropriately at this point the words of Daniel Burnham, the great American architect largely responsible for redesigning Chicago and Washington DC in the nineteenth century: “We need to dream lest we become like owls accustomed to the night and thinking there is no such thing as light.”
Ashraf’s exposition of a new Dhaka first dreamt and then built into existence depends on coming up with a master plan for the city that builds on but also goes way beyond the first one produced for it in 1959, the Dhaka Metropolitan Plan of 1995, the Detailed Area Plan of 2009, and on contemporary success stories of urbanization the world over. The plan of the future, he is sure, would have to draw on the city’s “geological history”, and the examples of men such as Jaime Lerner, “the former mayor of the miraculous city of Curitibia in Brazil” who in the nineteen-eighties transformed it from “destitution to dazzling hope”. Such a plan would also be informed by the French Marxist philosopher Henre Lefebvre’s concept of “Rights to the City” such as housing, health services, educational institutions, recreational spaces, clean air and greenery—all that relentless constructions work by “developers’, land-grabbers sanctioned by officialdom and/or blessed by parties/governments have been scanting, wolves all tearing the body of the city into pieces with their ravenous maws/claws. What Ashraf presumes is that the negative energy that is visible in all the frenzied constructions schemes and projects could be transformed into positive currents based on a “cohesive and comprehensive plan.” Ashraf’s vision for Dhaka is also a vision for a transformed Bangladesh. Perceptively, he notes that a remodeled and functional Dhaka could be replicated throughout the length and breadth of the country through a “greater conversation among planners, engineers and architects/urban designers.” Thinking no doubt of the famous exhortation of the visionary creator of China, Mao Zedong Ashraf would have a “hundred Dhakas’ be replicated across the country.
Ashraf’s fifteen points—remember Bangobondhu’s six-point manifesto so decisive in the birth of Bangladesh?—shows the extent of thought and work that has gone into writing Designing Dhaka. The first is the credo of urbanism that presupposes “a philosophy of the city” based on divining its “soul” and meditation on its distinctive being. Next is the belief that any viable plan for a livable Dhaka must take into account its deltaic and riverside origins. Which is to say, Dhaka needs to be re-visioned by making optimum use of its “crucial hydro-geographic system.” This necessitates Ashraf’s third point: in the case of Dhaka, planning must begin from its rivers’ banks; the key to redesigning the city is to “think ‘land-water’ use” and not concentrate merely on “land use.” Consequent to this formulation is the point about an action plan based on preserving Dhaka’s wetlands, reclaiming its lost and threatened canals, demarcating its flood zones, and using its water bodies to drain away pollutants; in other words, working with eco-consciousness and respect for Dhaka’s unique aqueous-impacted environment.
The fifth point for Dhaka is surely quite obvious but often scanted: the city must be spread out sensibly; the existing city, especially old Dhaka, must not only be restored to its old glories but also revitalized; the new one has to be seems as comprising nodes, or as Ashraf puts it, “a network of settlements” connected through fast and efficient transportation systems. This brings Ashraf logically to his next point— crucial to connectivity will be mass transit. He would like to see more roads of course, but also light rail, dedicated bus routes, “circular river routes” and last, but by no means least in importance, “traffic civility” (although Ashraf could have digressed here to include civility on the whole, discipline, and civic consciousness, which surely should be put under one heading and introduced as a course in all Dhaka schools). But Ashraf is well aware that paying attention to mass transportation systems can never be enough, and so his next point stresses streets dedicated to pedestrians, sidewalks reserved only for walking, promenades and esplanades paralleling our water bodies, covered walkways where appropriate, and all these constructions carried out with aesthetic finesse, helped by astute landscape gardening.
Ashraf’s subsequent three points are perhaps the ones that would occur as the most obvious ones for people who are less sophisticated and untutored than him but who are already engaged in the civic designing of a city. In Point Eight he thus recognizes like these people the urgent and unending need for housing, but his punning exhortation to them is “stop plotting and scheming”. To put it somewhat differently, it is the nexus of corrupt administrators and landsharks that lie at the root of the problem of a city that can’t offer decent housing to its denizens. The thing to do instead is to plan in terms of housing clusters and “compact walkable neighborhoods.” The next point underscores the importance of keeping intact whatever open spaces are still left and planning for more gardens, parks and cultural happening places anywhere and everywhere with them. Ashraf then turns to the question of city government, for he recognizes the urgent need for good governance, enlightened leadership, and a mayor of the stature of Tayyip Erdgoan, who transformed Istanbul between 1994-1998, Segio Fajardo, who uplifted Medellin between 2004 and 2007, Lee Myung-bak who heroically came up with a green Seoul in the first decade of this century, and most importantly, Jamie Lerner, who in his three terms of Mayor of Curtiba in the nineteen seventies proved that “even a desperate city can be turned around.”
The final five points of Ashraf’s fifteen point manifesto rely heavily on his architectural background. Point Ten notes that preserving heritage sites and “architectural and urban treasures and maintaining historic districts are crucial to make a city special as is planning for diversity and variety in city redesigning.” The point that follows notes the necessity of having more “catalytic architecture” or daring feats of redesigning and construction based on “exhibitionary buildings” such as Louis Kahn’s creations or the dramatically redone Hatirjheel. Such projects can clearly transform neighborhoods and make the city spectacularly different as a phenomenon and infinitely pleasing a place to be in. Ashraf is conscious too of providing citizens with places where they can play, perform, gather, loiter, read and just relax, and as he puts it at the end of his thirteenth point: “This is the Dhaka we dream of. And it is possible.” His fourteenth point would take advantage of the rapid industrialization of Bangladesh centered on its capital city; he would have arrangements made for structures and facilities that will not only facilitate increased movement and meet housing needs ensuing from fast-paced economic development, but will also poise the city so that it can become a hub of regional and international financial and trade activities. Ashraf’s final point may at first seem his most far-fetched argument but, in fact, it is among his most critical ones: what with global warming, climate change and rising sea levels Dhaka needs to come up with schemes of “sustainable urbanism” through radical ideas such as solar farming, water harvesting, waste recycling and energy-efficient buildings. As he concludes sensibly and wisely, “Dhaka will have to demonstrate that it recognizes the enormity of the challenges of climate change and is prepared to develop innovations to face that with its own resources and capabilities.”
Ashraf’s Designing Dhaka thus offers a comprehensive, systematic, thought-provoking as well as thought-filled plan for re-designing the city and overhauling it drastically so that we are ready for a city that will withstand the immense pressure on its resources. He has also given in this book the schemes and arguments that can take Dhaka’s citizens towards the urban future they deserve. But what makes Ashraf’s book so convincing an exposition of such a Dhaka are the details he offers of his plan through figures, maps, photographs, models, illustrations and diagrams. All of these features make Designing Dhaka a beautiful book to look at and a compelling work to ponder over where the reader’s imagination is stimulated by the wealth of images offered and where he and she can at least imagine the possibility of his or her dream of a livable, loveable Dhaka come true.
It would be great to only use superlatives about this brilliant book but it does have a weakness that must be noted and that the writer must eliminate in future editions. The book has been produced lovingly as far as content and graphics are concerned, but it needs to be edited much more carefully. More attention, for sure, needs to be paid to the writing; the labor of love that is Designing Dhaka surely must be re-presented to us as perfectly as is possible.
It is important, however, to end with praise. Kazi Khaed Ashraf has given us an invaluable book that needs to be read by our politicians, administrators, business people, and all citizens with the consciousness that something drastic and dramatic must be done for Dhaka without delay. Hopefully, next time they are stuck in traffic jam, such people will have a copy of Designing Dhaka to read while waiting for their cars to move again so that they can think of a different Dhaka made possible by ideas derived from the book and by collective action!
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