Importance of city resilience

Dhaka is often stigmatised as one of the least desirable cities on earth to live in. The Global Liveability Index for 2023 conducted by the British weekly, The Economist, has already ranked Dhaka the seventh least liveable city in the world earlier this year. And now, the city has been named the second least resilient city among 25 cities worldwide by Economist Impact, a concern of The Economist Group. The survey defines urban resilience as a city's ability to avoid, withstand and recover from shocks, such as natural disasters and from long-term stresses such as poverty, decrepit infrastructure, or migration. The Bangladesh capital has been evaluated in four categories including critical infrastructure, environment, socio-institutional and economic scales. In the survey, Dhaka comes in the 24th place with a score of 43. Only Lagos in Nigeria ranks behind it with a score of 39.6 while US city New York tops the list.
Dhaka has around 23 million residents. And it is among the most densely-populated cities in the globe. The population density of this city is nearly bursting at the seams. Hundreds of people are leaving their rural surroundings every day for the opportunities that Dhaka city might offer them. So, the rapidly growing metropolis shows no signs of slowing. These create poor living conditions for many residents, heavy traffic for all and pose an overall challenge of sustainability. Therefore, this city faces significant challenges in maintaining its infrastructure in the next 50 to 100 years.
In fact, no building in Dhaka city has been designed or constructed keeping 100 years of its lifespan in mind. Moreover, the buildings have been constructed on landfills due to unrestricted urbanisation without taking into consideration the nature of the soil or its vulnerability to earthquake. The expansion of Dhaka city to the east and southwest has, therefore, made it more vulnerable to earthquakes, since buildings in these areas are erected by filling up water reservoirs and wetlands. According to a survey by the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK), nearly 865,000 buildings would collapse in Dhaka city if an earthquake of 6.9 magnitude strikes at Madhupur fault in Tangail. Additionally, 210,000 people would die and another 229,000 would sustain injuries if the quake strikes during the day. So, there is an urgent need to manage Dhaka's building spree keeping mind the challenges of the future.
Every city is unique. And so is Dhaka. City resilience here can vary from other places. Yet, there are some common themes that should be taken into account for this megacity. They are:
People - the health and wellbeing of individuals;
Place - the way in which infrastructure and ecosystems protect and connect urban citizens;
Organisation - the social and financial systems that enable urban populations to live peacefully and act collectively;
Knowledge - the importance of informed decision-making and empowered stakeholders.
At the moment city resilience is not a popular term, and is not widely used or even understood in Bangladesh. But it is crucial to the wellbeing of Dhaka's urban communities, environment and economy. We should not underestimate the importance of building city resilience.

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