Towards a Paradigm of Liveable City-The Case of Dhaka

The Jahangirnagar Review, Part II: Social Science, Vol. XXVII, 2003 Printed in June, 2004. ISSN 1682-7422. © Jahangirnagar University. Towards a Paradigm of Liveable City-The Case of Dhaka Qazi Azizul Mowla Abstract: Tliere is an ongoing debate as to how the cilies should grow or be planned for liveabiJity and sustainability. There are many concepts towards achieving these goals emphasising various aspects of city dynamics but the community for whom the development is proposed is often neglected. Though the process of development plan could be universal, the parameters selected for the process to achieve the desired target must be place and community specific. To explain this point the paper takes Dhaka as the case for study and proposes the integration of contemporary 'New Urbanist' prescriptions in the local context with the community structure, values, heritage etc. at the core of it to overcome the identity crisis from which Dhaka is suffering and which is an important aspect of liveability and sustainability. Introduction In order to make a case of a liveable city it is of paramount importance to understand the contemporary socio-spatial dynamics of a city. Contemporary paradigm for a developing city naturally varies from the developed city. Considering Dhaka as a typical example of developing cities it has been taken here as a case to analyse the paradigm for liveable city. Like most of the developing cities, contemporary Dhaka's urban morphology shows two distinct patterns, a high-style (formal) pattern and another indigenous pattern (both informal and organic). Though the formal pattern seems more articulated the indigenous pattern reflects the societal values and norms better (Mowla, 1999a). The studies suggest that though both patterns co-exist and interact to reinforce each other, yet in the ultimate analysis, it is the indigenous spirit that dominates and persists as an archetype in the Dhaka's context (Mowla, 1997a). In the past mahalla-punchayet structure in Dhaka provided a coherent urban fabric that grew out of a few rules of health, safety, accessibility, privacy and other social norms. Given the mahalla or para as a socio-spatial unit and punchayet as a grass root level body of urban governance including planning and implementation, there is no reason why similar results cannot be achieved under contemporary situation with appropriate guidelines (Mowla, 2001). The development that is taking place unguided may be brought under a development strategy. Understanding of basic organising principles and bringing them under a formal planning framework would help evolve a sustainable and vigorous city. With the backdrop in mind the following sections reexamines Dhaka's spatial development pattern to outline a paradigm towards a liveable city. However, for a better understanding of the context, the review begins with the examining of a global scenario and narrowing it down to the local context.  Professor, Department of Architecture, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka-1000, Bangladesh. Aims, objectives and methodology of the study The aim and objective of this paper is to examine the growth pattern of a city and identify its liveability and sustainability criterion. Different authors have tried to define the criterion in different ways but the community needs and aspirations of the people for whom the development is proposed is often neglected. Though the process of development plan could be universal, the parameters selected for the process to achieve the desired target must be place and community specific. To study this specificity the 'New Urbanisf prescriptions are examined here in the Dhaka's context with the community structure, values, heritage etc. at the core of it. The objective is to overcome the identity crisis from which Dhaka is suffering and which is an important aspect of liveability and sustainability. Methodology employed in the study is a combination of literature review concerning the liveability and sustainability of developed cities, particularly the concept of 'new urbanism' and compare that with the Dhaka's context based on the authors observations and experience. Global scenario The United States (USA) being relatively a new civilization its urbanisation process and the spatial pattern that evolved may be a fruitful study to start with as other older civilizations are heavily influenced by their past culture and heritage. However older civilizations need to be reckoned to understand the total gamut of liveability and sustainability issues concerning a city. It is observed that through the first quarter of last century, the USA was developed in the form of compact, mixed-use neighbourhoods. The pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture and zoning and ascension of the automobile. After World War II, a new system of development was implemented there, replacing neighbourhoods with strict zoning or a rigorous separation of uses that has become known as Conventional Suburban Development (CSD), or sprawl. The majority of USA citizens now live in suburban communities built in the last 50 years (Steuteville, 2000). Although CSD and functional zones has been popular as a development strategy both in developed and developing countries, it carries a significant price. Lacking a town centre or pedestrian scale, CSD spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Functional zoning and CSD necessitate the use of automobile for almost all-human transportation. Inadequate public transport severely handicaps the mobility of the citizens besides making it costly and hazardous. The working poor living in suburbia spend a large portion of their incomes on transport and communication (Contrary to western examples, in Dhaka suburbs or urban fringes are densely populated). Meanwhile, strip malls, auto-oriented civic and commercial buildings, a.nd subdivisions without individuality or character dominate the urban landscape of a contemporary city where most people live and work. Though the context is different, it is observed that professionals trained abroad continued to blindly follow western paradigm in Dhaka without considering the reality in the ground and neglect the community for whom the development plans are being proposed. The measures for city's liveability There is an ongoing debate over how physical planning can contribute to make the cities or to be more specific the public spaces more vibrant. There is a general tendency all over the world to look towards the West to frame their design paradigm. The tendency is understandable, as contemporary urban design and planning in most of the countries has its roots in European colonization of their countries (Mowla and Reza, 2000). However, in North America or Australia, it is more nostalgic for a way of life that is an anachronism (Brill, 1989). Recently planners and urban designers in the west particularly in USA were concerned about banality, sterility and blight of their public spaces and accuse urban design and planning practices for the problems. Contemporary trend of urban design is to learn from the traditional city morphology and to apply them in a contemporary development context. However, the debate is not new, similar views were expressed by Patrick Geddes (1917), the misunderstood and misrepresentative pioneer of planning, as early as in the beginning of last century. Much time has elapsed since than, Levi-Straus (1958, 1980), Jacobs (1961), Sennett (1977) or Kunstler (1994) and many others attributed bleakness of civic spaces to the loss of social domain due to post-war planning and living priorities or patterns. Generally the rigid zoning approach is blamed for this malice. Their arguments were based on historical, philosophical and socio-economic parameters. Recently advocates of New Urbanistn Concept (NUC) try to propagate the pattern of traditional societies and believe that their settlement pattern carries the cure to the modern banality but their emphasis is too much on the physical aspects of the pattern. The new urbanism prescriptions According to Krier (1991) and Katz (1994) the heart of the NUC is in the design of neighbourhoods, and there is no clearer description than the characteristics as adjusted by Mowla (2002a) for local context and presented below. It is believed that an authentic neighbourhood or a mahalla contains most of the following elements: o The (socio-spatial) neighbourhood//»flft«Z/a or para has a discernible centre. This is often a square of a green, and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this centre. o Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the centre, an average of roughly 2,000 feet. o There are a variety of dwelling types so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy besides other cross section of people may find places to live. o There are shops and offices at the edge of the neighbourhood, of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household and make the area lively round the clock. o A small ancillary building is permitted within the backyard of each house. It may be used as a rental unit or place to work (e.g. office or craft workshop). o An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home. o There are small playgrounds near every dwelling, not more than a tenth of a mile away. o Streets, within the neighbourhood are a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination. o The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees or even may be by structures. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles. o Buildings in the neighbourhood centre are placed close to the street, creating a well-defined outdoor room or urban lobby. o Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys and buildings having verandas or terraces fronting the street. o Certain prominent sites at the termination of street vistas or in the neighbourhood centre are reserved for civic buildings. These provide sites for community meetings, education, religion or cultural activities. o The neighbourhood is organized to be self-governing. As in the punchayet system of older Dhaka, where a formal association debated and decided matters of maintenance, security and physical change. Taxation would be the responsibility of the larger community. The fallacy of the concept It may be noted here that there is an emphasis on the physicality of a neighbourhood but the people who constitute the community is ignored in the Charter of New Urbanism- CNU or Charter of Athens. These two themes are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And in what nowadays passes for the NUC (Calthorpe, 1993 and Katz, 1994), we witness their deliberate conflation into a programmatic statement. Urban living can be radically improved, made more authentic and less placeless, it is argued, by a return to concepts of neighbourhood and community that once upon a time gave such vibrancy, coherence, continuity, and stability to urban life (Mowla, 2002a). Collective memory of a more civic past can be recaptured by a proper appeal to traditional symbols and social structure. Building something called community coupled with the politics of place can provide some sort of empowering basis for such a struggle (Harvey, 1996). But the NUC pays no mind to that: it builds an image of community and rhetoric of place-based civic pride and consciousness for those who do not need it, while abandoning those that do to their 'underclass' fate. There is much in this movement to commend it, beyond the adrenaline surge of doing battle with conventional wisdoms entrenched in a wide range of institutions (developers, bankers, governments, transport interests, etc.). There is, first, the willingness to think about the place of particular developments within the region as a whole and to pursue a much more organic, holistic ideal of what cities and regions might be about. In so doing, the post-modern fondness for fragmentation is overcome, even as Unwin, the New York Regional Plan of 1929, and Mumford are resurrected as better guides to action than the Charter of Athens. There is, furthermore, a strong interest in intimate and integrated forms of development that by-pass the rather stultifying conception of the horizontally zoned and large-platted city. This liberates an interest in the street and civic architecture as arenas of social milieu. It also permits new ways of thinking about the relation between work and living; facilitates an ecological dimension to design that goes somewhat beyond the argument for superior environmental quality as a consumer good (though there is plenty of that in evidence); and begins to pay attention to the thorny problem of what to do with the profligate energy requirements of the automobile-based form of urbanization and suburbanization that has predominated the modern development. Settlements stripped of their workplace and emphasizing only on conventional housing pattern is bound to fail as we have witnessed in Dhanmondi residential area and like. In the absence of employment and government largesse, the 'civic' claims of the new urbanism sound particularly hollow (Harvey, 1996). General criticism against neotraditionalist or NUC mindset is that they are yet another suburb in disguise- there is nothing neo or traditional about them, as the concept is too concerned with appearances, while social concerns and regional issues of transportation and land use are neglected. Communities are seen to result from the built form rather than from the people who inhibit there. Critics find conventional suburb with single family house (not the community) is doing just as fine, and branded instigator of this trend as elite groups within society who are seeking to preserve idealized aesthetic and social order with an indulgent understanding of the complexity of the contemporary urban condition (Thompsom, 1996). In short, main criticism of NUC are its heavy reliance on nostalgic imagery, its implied environmental determinism, its deployment in sub urban setting, its class exclusivity and its limiting definition of tradition. The lessons to be learned One cannot help but hope that the lessons of new towns (e.g. Uttara Model Town) now takir)g shape can be applied to the problem of housing for the poor. That is where community is most needed and where it has been most disastrously destroyed. Centre city would truly have to be broken down into its intrinsic neighbourhoods or mahallas if this were to take place within it (Mowla, 1997b). It would all have been much easier to use the traditional structure while the city centres were planned, when the basic structure of neighbourhoods was still there. It is therefore a real question whether 'centre city' as we know it can ever be shaped into the kind of place most of us want to live in. The presumption here is that neighbourhoods are in some sense 'inherent,' that the proper form of cities is some 'structure of neighbourhoods,' that 'neighbourhood' is equivalent to 'community,' and that 'community' is what most newurbanist want and need (whether they know it or not). The NUC in fact connects to a facile contemporary attempt to transform large and teeming cities, so seemingly out of control, into an interlinked series of 'urban villages' where, it is believed, everyone can relate in a civil and urbane fashion to everyone else. In Britain, Prince Charles has led the way on this but in Dhaka, though there are no indications in that direction, it is believed that the situation is still not beyond repairable condition, and the authorities may act even now to develop a sustainable and liveable city with a proper balance and integration of spatiality and society. Geddes's (1917) approach for development (conservative surgery) is still thought to be the most realistic one for a sustainable development / redevelopment with contemporary needs in the Dhaka's context. One of the relevant issues may also be cited to clarify the problem. No matter by what means people travel, they end up as pedestrian on urban side walks and therefore ultimate limit on the smooth functioning of an urban area is its provision for pedestrian circulation. Yet, in Dhaka, the planning for pedestrian in urban areas has been badly neglected. With real estate pressure, buildings were forced to get taller without matching services infrastructure and thereby attracting more pedestrian trips. No effort were made to set the buildings back further from building line, on the contrary more encroachment were made on the side walks. When ever, road widening was needed it was done at the expense of walkway space-thus the pedestrian was squeezed into leftover space (if any) between the vehicular traffic and the building wall (Mowla, 1994). There are also serious flaws in the planning and implementation of foot over bridges or underpasses as can be seen from non-workability and by some of the recent mishaps. Result of this situation, coupled with ignoring the community and their nonresponsiveness makes the things worse (Mowla, 2000a). Although light rail or other mass transit may cost more than buses, it says a lot about both the humanity of Dhaka's society and the liveability it want. Urban Reality and Context call for embracing real citizen involvement (Mowla, 2001). There should be a halt to social engineering our cities and neighbourhoods and need to stop and listen to what citizens are really saying. The contextual urbanism The preceding .sections point towards some real life/down to earth urban issues that needs addressing in any liveable and sustainable city. Contextuality and reality in urban concern as Mowla (1997b and 2000b) or Carson (2001) define it, is the representation of life or objects, as they really exist rather than romanticizing or idealizing them. Urban context and realism in terms of urban design should be marked by that which (a) Provides personal and community safety, (b) Provides personal and community space, (c) Is truly market-driven and about freedom of choice, (d) Is cost-effective, (e) Is rational, practical and functional (even factual), and (f) Embraces real citizen involvement and is populous, It is about the quality-of-life that people want. Not a quality-of-life chosen for them by professional experts. These are the characteristics that advocates of.NUC or post NUC should cater for (Mowla, 1999b). The demise of NUC may be hastened by historical events, in fact as some of its critics put it is already on life support. Krier (1991), its founder said, 'What we have to point out to modernists again and again is that in democracies even architecture and urbanism are a matter of choice'. Krier further noted that, 'Modernism is a totalitarian ideology which, like all dogmatisms, is based on unprovable assumptions'. These were lessons not learned so far by.the New Urbanists. One wag recently wrote that NUC projects 'are feel-good faux-towns, cozy and nostalgic developments which feign urbanity without making the effort to actually be urban'. This is because, as Carson (2001) points out, such projects give one the sense of being on the set of a theatre.'They are not organic human settlements. They are artificially arranged groups of buildings, not unlike the Fantasy Kingdom of Ashulia in Dhaka or the gaudy Victoria's Secret and Disney retail store fronts in any megamall in USA. • .. The Modernist movement (of Le Corbusier), which provided the utilitarian skyscraper that is ruling till the end of the last century in the west. Though the New Urbanists campaign for low-rise development, the demise of the skyscraper will not occur because of them, it. will occur in spite of them. Both will end because of the adaptive evolution of. contemporary contextuality. As a society, Dhaka must survive, therefore, there is a need to adapt the settlement patterns to survive the emerging context, based on historical precedence (Mowla, 1999b). New Urbanism concept and practice if continues to emphasize on physical form devoid of social structure will be forgotten as a momentary novelty before long. Declining demand for space at city centre is more due to the social reasons than land use or traffic and transportation related problems. To rehabilitate deserted city centres, instead of rent control, such housing and floor spaces is now subsidized to attract the citizens back in many western cities (as in New York). To avoid central city problems the corporate urbanite tends to move out of their inner-city corporate symbols and back into the more academic-research suburban campuses with 4-6 story mid-rise buildings- the trend is also observed in Dhaka. This happens because corporate set-ups need to attract employees who want to be psychologically safe, within close proximity of their place of work and conform to their transcended social instinct. September 11 event in USA has expedited the process (in the west) that was in motion. Corporate world needs it, besides other factors, because a jet airliner cannot destroy an entire company, in a campus setting, in a single act of terrorism. And in the case of Dhaka decentralization and mixture of use is needed more so because of the traditional way of life that demands it (psychologically) besides the transport and communication that becomes easier and cheaper especially in the light of new electronic gadgets. Historically and technologically the timing is perfect. The advent of the Information Age, with the new electronic mediums of the Internet and wireless, is facilitating this corporate decentralization process and that is what is also happening particularly in Dhaka. There are limitations of comparing developing neo-traditional settlements with established new town settlements. The gap between theory and practice suggest that new urbanist framework requires further refinement in the light of current urbanization. At this point there are many more questions than answers but question offer many research opportunities. However, important out-come of comparative studies of new and conventional community designs, recognizes that designers need to encourage adaptable, evolutionary urban form that can grow and change in response to human needs and preferences (Mowla, 2003). The future of the Traditional Neighbourhood Developments (TND) paradigm and its contribution to a re-evaluation of urban planning and design norms in the west is yet to be seen, at least until full implementation of their objectives. However, these new developments offer, to those who can afford them, an expanded range of choice in a largely undifferentiated suburban market. Whether or not these post-modern designs can also offer a cure for the problems still remains to be evaluated. Contextual urbanism with reference to Dhaka With this overview of global trend Dhaka's urban reality may be evaluated. People tend to psychologically alienate themselves from the crisis that is beyond their capacity to manage; this may be termed as psycho-spatial estrangement or withdrawal syndrome or escapist attitude in a popular vocabulary. Dhaka suffers from this type of desensitisation of its inhabitants towards their physical surroundings that result from dissatisfaction. The abundance of dizzying visual, aural and olfactory stimuli effectively desensitises a person or a community in his / their interaction with the environment, which in turn results in his/their withdrawal, mentally if not physically as mentioned above. This estrangement is manifested spatially in the increasing emphasis on individual buildings with extensive use of protective grills, disjointed plots with security walls, private world of multi-storied apartment buildings and, most importantly, in the loss of urban public spaces for healthy social interaction of masses. Insensitive building by-laws together with the mismanagement of RAJUK (Capital Development Authority) and DCC (Dhaka City Corporation) are also not beyond question for this state of affairs. Dhaka is suffering from identity crises. Dhaka suffers from image crisis due to gross socio-spatial disorder in the urban fabric. There are popular or sound urban spaces in Dhaka by any standard like Shangshad Bhaban area. New Market or TSC etc. but they are isolated ones unable to give the city an image due to many other related socio spatial factors that attach the spaces to users senses (Mowla, 2002c). Lynch (1960) called the urban character 'imageability', that quality in a city, which gives it a high probability of evoking a strong image in any given observer. What Lynch implies by the term imageability in spatial sense is that a city dweller needs an orientation and a vivid image of his city in order to live with a sense of attachment and pride, without which he essentially becomes estranged from the very place he lives and provoked to create spaces, which would show the nature of his estrangement. Dhaka has become a conglomerafion of innumerable self-alienating private spaces of various sizes and scales. This has culminated from the estrangement of the individual from the neighbourhood; the neighbourhood from the region of the city; and, ultimately, the region from the overall structure of the city. In the process, not only does the individual estrangement become spatially inscribed and socially enforced within the secure and policed boundaries of the private complexes, but also, more importantly, loss or eroded are the public places where a city's true life resides, flows and flourishes, and finally causing a loss of identity. To emphasize, this chain of episodes gives a city its identity and held as a collective image in the minds of its inhabitants. The image of a city as has already been mentioned rests on its very public spaces - the identity which makes people self-conscious of their city and ultimately, their culture and heritage. What culture and heritage we are making or remaking through contemporary trend of urbanization is a vital question we the professionals and policy planners should ask our-selves. Prescription for relief in Dhaka's urban malice From the preceding overview, the study may further go on to examine the Dhaka's context. In a nutshell it may be said that there is no alternative to an efficient urban management and governance. The fact that law and order situation has an adverse impact on the settlement pattern also cannot be denied (Mowla, 2002b). Further to these realities it may also be pointed out that lively urban areas are in fact created by popular civic spaces. Popular civic spaces are those that cater for the needs of the community. The needs (social, physical and psychological) vary from place to place, therefore, character of civic spaces or image of an urban area also differ from region to region. An Urban Designer, Architect or a Physical Planner must appreciate these regional variations and understand local context, in order to plan / design sensitively. Observations reveal that Dhaka does have a unique character of civic spaces created by the social attitude of the user group. It is found that the proximity or the security of a civic space, variety and specialty of activities available, visibility or legibility and intimacy or personalization of the area together with their porosity or permeability are the key attributes of popular public spaces in Dhaka (Mowla, 2002C). Urban spaces provide the people of a city chance to interact with others and make spaces for recreation, demonstration, strolling, gathering, vending, and so on and so forth. A city .becomes liveable only when it provides a workable grid of public spaces. The attributes for making a lively and popular space are similar to what we see elsewhere. Besides NUC prescriptions discussed in the earlier sections and the recommended social fabric for a sustainable urban paradigm, the essential and common characteristics of successful and popular civic spaces can be enumerated as follows (Mowla, 2002c): (a) Variety of events and activities: Ghel (1980) observes that it is not the building but people and event that needs to be assembled to create a successful civic space, (b) Sense of space: R includes scale and proportion of primary enclosures as well as the presence and qualities of secondary enclosures. Surrounding heights, Physical dimensions of space (with visual limits) are also important factors in giving a sense,of space, (c) Social and Physical Protection: Noise levels measured at different parts of Dhaka were found at hazardous levels; they varied between about 65 dB at Gulshan-Banani to about 110 dB at Gabtali-Sayeedabad bus terminals on an average busy time of the day- these are much above the recommended day time higher levels of around 60 dB in the work areas. The human quality and organic order have been shattered due to the aggression of noise, pollution and crime. It is observed that places with less than 60 dB sound level are more human friendly (Mowla, 1994), (d) Orientation: Quality of a particular way or route which leads to a particular space, quality of surrounding spaces and environment within, are very important for assemblage of people. So it is fundamentally, location, environment and hierarchy of activities leading to a space that constitute orientation, and lastly, (e) Street and outdoor furniture: a successful civic space must be sufficiently adorned with elements which provide scale and are in harmony with the general sitting, seeing or standing habits of people. Dhanmondi and Crescent Lake (Shangsad Bhaban area) may be partly compared in this respect where presence of convenient sitting places such as hard surfaces, steps, tree planters or base etc. acts as some of the important factors for attraction. The fact that a city's urban spaces are a city's strength as well as its image-makers receives no serious attention from the civic bodies. For them intangible qualities / needs of urban spaces are of no value. Conclusion ; This study has evaluated briefly the city dynamics to outline a contemporary paradigm for a liveable city. The validity of various concepts and practices in the contemporary urban design were also scrutinized and, therefore, the study extends the spatial concepts by including traditional civic institutions as an integral ingredient of urban dynamics. The study concludes that the process of development that had evolved from the context was destroyed (Mowla, 2000b). The process that is in practice has been transplanted unimaginatively from different context. This has resulted in a gap between planning and implementation. Social institutions in the past, that were playing a pivotal role in the urban morphological development, had also created mutual trust and respect between citizens. They were instrumental in developing a sense of moral obligation, among individuals toward their community. These institutions, if revived under present context, will help restore confidence of the citizen, may go a long way in the regeneration of a healthy environment for development. Therefore, a contemporary paradigm for a liveable and sustainable city needs to follow both the social and spatial prescriptions forwarded above in their local context. Notes • Some of the changes recommended by CNU members include accepting that (Athens Charter is a 11 point manifesto formulated by CIAM- Congres Internaiionaux d' Architecture Moderns in 1933). • land is a finite natural resource-rather than a commodity. " • personal vehicle mobility should not hold the status of a basic right. • large houses on large lots are not necessarily an ultimate aspiration in terms of quality of life. • diversity of residents in a community is enriching. • lower land costs per un it can be achieved by relatively higher densities while also ensuring an abundance of public spaces. • new urbanism's market is broader than is typical in new developments because of the diversity of urban attractions in this type of development. • alterations to market preferences are easily catered for by a range of pre-approved unit options. • constructing a full range of housing types (as opposed to clusters for separate sectors of residential market) in the first phase of a project lowers initial infrastructure costs. • higher-density development reduces set-up and maintenance cost of public infrastructure. • incorporation of a diversity of uses broadens the tax base for local authorities. • neighbourhood shops do not require the extensive shared-cost refurbishment common in malls. 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