Mega city poised to face mega challenges
Saturday, 20 November 2010
As one of the world's fastest growing mega cities and one of the poorest, Dhaka is facing severe challenges sooner than most others. Its population, now estimated at about 15 million, is expected to hit 20-25 million by 2025. Slums are between 30 and 50 per cent of all Dhaka residences-and those continue to absorb most of the hundreds of thousands of new migrants, who arrive every year. According to a local daily, about 2,100 people migrate to Dhaka everyday. If the influx continues in such a pace, it would be the world's second-largest mega city (after Tokyo) by 2015.
Dhaka city is beset with a number of problems such as, over urbanisation, traffic congestion, water logging, solid waste disposal, black smoke from brick kilns and industrial emissions, sound pollution, pollution of water bodies by industrial discharge and the newly added calamity, building collapse. Water pollution is already rampant. The river Buriganga flows by the side of the densely populated area of the old city. Dumping of wastes on the river by industries is rather indiscriminate. The indiscriminate discharge of domestic sewage, industrial effluents and disposal of solid wastes are becoming a great concern from the point of water-quality degradation. The impact of water shortage, pollution, wastes mismanagement fall most heavily on the poor.
The challenge of housing is a direct result of over urbanisation. Without any money many people have to find housing that is cheap or live on the streets. The result is the creation of slums where people construct housing out of scrap materials. These slums are generally located in the areas where other people would not live in. Providing enough space per capita becomes an immense challenge, which has already led to expansion into adjacent land but still the problem remains. Again, unplanned and poor quality of construction may lead to disasters in future. As most of the developers do not follow the building code, many building have collapsed recently. After spending millions of taka on flats and apartments the fate of the owners hangs in the balance. In case of earthquakes, many buildings may tilt or completely collapse and thus retrofit measures are needed. But, unfortunately, the newly built buildings fall due to the lack of piling or lack of soil profile analysis or may be due to other reasons that our experts will find out, but who will bell the cat?
Nearly half of all Bangladeshis live below the poverty line, able only to glance at the gleaming new malls built in Dhaka. Urbanisation and the pressure of poverty are severely stressing the country's once-abundant natural resources. According to US Aid for International Development (USAID), "Pressures on Bangladesh's biological resources are intense and growing." They include: Poor management of aquatic and terrestrial resources, population growth, overuse of resources, unplanned building projects, and expansion of agriculture onto less-productive lands, creating erosion and mud slides, among other, consequences.
Apparently, the middle and upper classes of the country permanently residing in the capital are healthier and have access to better services than the villagers. This distorts reality. It is applicable only to those inhabitants -- the one-half to two-thirds - not living in the slums, yet a cursory inspection of the poorer quarters of the capital city reveals that this is palpably untrue.
There are few accurate statistics about life expectancy and health risks in Dhaka slums. But existing data show that the urban poor can be much worse off than the rural poor. Many deaths are associated with diarrhoeal diseases and infections stemming from poor hygiene. Better public health undoubtedly requires sound public health engineering. The problem today is that public health engineering solutions based on the 19th century precepts of centralised systems built and maintained are inappropriate to the extraordinary pace and character of the contemporary urbanisation process.
Much has been written about the poor traffic situation that consists of: i. Unavailability of public transport. ii. Too many private transports. iii. Inadequate percentage of roads. iv. Haphazard parking. v. Obstructive footpath, vi. Road accident and pedestrian casualty, vii. Violation of traffic law, and the like. The mental and physical stress endured by the city dwellers everyday is beyond imagination.
Some cities in the developing world are already facing critical environmental degradation. This is the result of over exploitation of surface water sources, improper waste disposal, contamination of rivers and streams, the reckless extraction of water from depleted aquifers, and a long list of service management deficiencies. Water boards and public utilities fight a losing battle to provide a functioning service in the face of increasing demand, as the quantity of available water dwindles and the quality declines, disruptions -even sabotage-of existing systems cannot be ruled out. A vicious circle develops in which the service is so poor that it cannot recover its costs from users, and the income generated so low that the service cannot be improved.
But despite all the negatives, there is a growing environmental movement in Bangladesh that is working to save Dhaka's natural resources. Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon holds demonstrations and international action days to increase citizen awareness of dying rivers.
In general, an optimist might cheer urbanisation as a sign of modernisation. People of the country are much more likely to live in Dhaka than anywhere else. The city, after all, is the hub of industry, education and what not! Despite the importance for economic growth, social well-being and sustainability of present and future generations, much attention has not been paid to Dhaka and that is why majority of the country's garment factory jobs is in the capital, along with most of the country's universities and the government offices. One of the key to stemming the problems will be to move some of the magnets for migration out of Dhaka otherwise, the situation would be suicidal.
E-mail: shafiq@iidfc.com
Dhaka city is beset with a number of problems such as, over urbanisation, traffic congestion, water logging, solid waste disposal, black smoke from brick kilns and industrial emissions, sound pollution, pollution of water bodies by industrial discharge and the newly added calamity, building collapse. Water pollution is already rampant. The river Buriganga flows by the side of the densely populated area of the old city. Dumping of wastes on the river by industries is rather indiscriminate. The indiscriminate discharge of domestic sewage, industrial effluents and disposal of solid wastes are becoming a great concern from the point of water-quality degradation. The impact of water shortage, pollution, wastes mismanagement fall most heavily on the poor.
The challenge of housing is a direct result of over urbanisation. Without any money many people have to find housing that is cheap or live on the streets. The result is the creation of slums where people construct housing out of scrap materials. These slums are generally located in the areas where other people would not live in. Providing enough space per capita becomes an immense challenge, which has already led to expansion into adjacent land but still the problem remains. Again, unplanned and poor quality of construction may lead to disasters in future. As most of the developers do not follow the building code, many building have collapsed recently. After spending millions of taka on flats and apartments the fate of the owners hangs in the balance. In case of earthquakes, many buildings may tilt or completely collapse and thus retrofit measures are needed. But, unfortunately, the newly built buildings fall due to the lack of piling or lack of soil profile analysis or may be due to other reasons that our experts will find out, but who will bell the cat?
Nearly half of all Bangladeshis live below the poverty line, able only to glance at the gleaming new malls built in Dhaka. Urbanisation and the pressure of poverty are severely stressing the country's once-abundant natural resources. According to US Aid for International Development (USAID), "Pressures on Bangladesh's biological resources are intense and growing." They include: Poor management of aquatic and terrestrial resources, population growth, overuse of resources, unplanned building projects, and expansion of agriculture onto less-productive lands, creating erosion and mud slides, among other, consequences.
Apparently, the middle and upper classes of the country permanently residing in the capital are healthier and have access to better services than the villagers. This distorts reality. It is applicable only to those inhabitants -- the one-half to two-thirds - not living in the slums, yet a cursory inspection of the poorer quarters of the capital city reveals that this is palpably untrue.
There are few accurate statistics about life expectancy and health risks in Dhaka slums. But existing data show that the urban poor can be much worse off than the rural poor. Many deaths are associated with diarrhoeal diseases and infections stemming from poor hygiene. Better public health undoubtedly requires sound public health engineering. The problem today is that public health engineering solutions based on the 19th century precepts of centralised systems built and maintained are inappropriate to the extraordinary pace and character of the contemporary urbanisation process.
Much has been written about the poor traffic situation that consists of: i. Unavailability of public transport. ii. Too many private transports. iii. Inadequate percentage of roads. iv. Haphazard parking. v. Obstructive footpath, vi. Road accident and pedestrian casualty, vii. Violation of traffic law, and the like. The mental and physical stress endured by the city dwellers everyday is beyond imagination.
Some cities in the developing world are already facing critical environmental degradation. This is the result of over exploitation of surface water sources, improper waste disposal, contamination of rivers and streams, the reckless extraction of water from depleted aquifers, and a long list of service management deficiencies. Water boards and public utilities fight a losing battle to provide a functioning service in the face of increasing demand, as the quantity of available water dwindles and the quality declines, disruptions -even sabotage-of existing systems cannot be ruled out. A vicious circle develops in which the service is so poor that it cannot recover its costs from users, and the income generated so low that the service cannot be improved.
But despite all the negatives, there is a growing environmental movement in Bangladesh that is working to save Dhaka's natural resources. Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon holds demonstrations and international action days to increase citizen awareness of dying rivers.
In general, an optimist might cheer urbanisation as a sign of modernisation. People of the country are much more likely to live in Dhaka than anywhere else. The city, after all, is the hub of industry, education and what not! Despite the importance for economic growth, social well-being and sustainability of present and future generations, much attention has not been paid to Dhaka and that is why majority of the country's garment factory jobs is in the capital, along with most of the country's universities and the government offices. One of the key to stemming the problems will be to move some of the magnets for migration out of Dhaka otherwise, the situation would be suicidal.
E-mail: shafiq@iidfc.com