Making cities liveable

According to Mercer's18th annual quality of living survey (2016), European cities continue to offer the world's highest quality of living. The vast region of Asia has considerable variation in this. In its 26th place, Singapore remains the highest ranking city in Asia whereas Dhaka is the lowest. Leaders in many cities want to understand the specific factors that affect their residents' quality of living and address those issues. Mercer is a global consulting agency which evaluates local living conditions in more than 440 cities surveyed worldwide. 

 

Living conditions are analysed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories such as political and social environment, economic and socio-cultural environment, medical and health considerations, schools and education, public services and transportation, recreation, consumer goods, housing condition and natural environment.

 

Life in cities in this country, especially in Dhaka, is marked by squalor  related to crowded dingy houses, congested and stressful streets, slums and squatter settlements, accumulating waste and filth, footpaths occupied by floating people and hawkers, polluted air and contaminated land and waterways and also of increasing crimes, drug-peddling, snatching, theft and mugging and contagious diseases. 

 

With rapid urbanisation, various other problems are evident--increasing number of people being accommodated in existing communities, intolerable intrusion of cars choking the vitality out of communities and cities, increasing dependence on cars leading to urban sprawl and peri-urbanisation, congested streets making travel harrowing and time-consuming, rapid conversion of agricultural lands to urban uses, demise of ecologically sensitive areas much required to offset natural disasters, accumulating waste, increasing pollution, increasing number of people living in deplorable conditions in slums and squatter settlements, and so on.  

 

The fast disappearance of open spaces, parks and public places has turned cities into meaningless places to the inhabitants. People, forced to inactive and indoor living style, also do not have any feeling for their communities or the cities and their sense of belonging is lost. The condition of other larger cities (for example Chittagong) is almost the same. It seems that the main aim of cities in Bangladesh is to accommodate ever increasing number of people without giving a thought whether liveability and sustainability can be maintained. City development authorities and managers are unable or simply fail to understand how to contain their fast growth. Development authorities seem to have very little idea about what they are trying to achieve by this or how the shape of these cities affects their inhabitants. 

 

Dhaka is facing an image crisis. In terms of urban life, the city is far behind achieving the required qualities. Amid some planned areas, and picturesque sites and buildings, the city is troubled by many problems to function as an efficient modern city delivering the desired services. Its dwellers experience difficulties on most fronts of life, as it lacks an appropriate city plan to offer the desired quality of life. The national and local leaderships have paid little attention to utilise the potential of the national capital as a global city. 

 

There has been continuous negligence in developing cities and towns in a planned manner.  For Dhaka, and also for other urban centres of different scales in Bangladesh, the plans that were made at different times wasted considerable time in approval and implementation processes. Implementation of plans in most instances had generally been delayed and in some cases in the past, not implemented at all. The civil society is continuously expressing its concerns over different planning and development problems of the city. Over time, problems of the city have been accumulated and have reached a point of serious concern. Such concerns are multi-faceted, and without a permanent solution to these problems, not only Dhaka city but also other important urban centres in the country may soon fail to function as liveable city. Unless something is done immediately to control the fast growing cities the loss of quality of life of people and degradation of environment will be irreversible.

 

To ensure sustainable quality of life of the urban centres throughout the country, lesson should be learned from the failures of Dhaka city. And the causes of such failure in Dhaka city must be reduced and prevented in order not to replicate in other areas of the country. The city corporations and municipalities should also develop a plan for proper implementation of master plans. If the city is to be functional and liveable, various components or units that make up the city have to be unquestionably workable, functional and liveable. For better and liveable cities the following key aspects must be considered by the development authorities, municipal authorities, and respective professional bodies such as: compact township with a comfortable higher density, preventing sprawl development (inefficient use of land), attractive public places, universal urban designs and landscaping, walkable communities and a disaster (both natural and man made) resilient community.

 

The writer is a student of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, 39th Batch, Jahangirnagar University.

 

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