In rapidly growing Dhaka a struggle for the last remaining undeveloped areas rages. Channels and streams, the rural environs, wetlands and fringes are threatened by illegal appropriation. But in this context it is wrong to think only of slums and squatter settlements; more and more residential areas for the well-to-do, business parks and industrial facilities are being developed without authorisation – a manifestation of an unhampered neoliberal development tendency. A view on the results of ruthless exploitation of the ecosystem and bad land use that have lasted for 40 years in this megacity

The land nowadays owned by government agencies in the central districts of Dhaka, either vacant or under illegal occupation by squatters, was mostly allotted during the East Pakistan period, when the city was sparsely populated and land comparatively abundant. Particularly the proximities of water bodies – canals and ditches constituting a vital water regulation as well as communication system – came into public property. After Liberation (1971) however, poor record keeping and high levels of corruption aided transfer of many such parcels into private ownership. Additionally, many landless migrants from the impoverished countryside started squatting on the lands, especially those having direct access to water. Both sorts of misuse – by those who had little or no choice to squatting, as well as by the rich entrepreneurs having little to fear from the State – have led to scarcity of government-owned lands for public projects, and to a devastated eco-system, especially along the water bodies, under which all groups of society suffer. While picnic spots and guesthouses for the rich outside the city are located close to rivers and low-lying lands, the Buriganga – the river that historically accompanied and boosted Dhaka‘s growth – is now choking with industrial pollution and siltation. Until today, Dhaka‘s poor find affordable accommodation sites in the dry beds of canals and in riverside areas; the corporate world continues to encroach or grab land for construction.

In 1956, the Dhaka Improvement Trust was brought into being in order to regulate and supervise planning and development issues. It played a crucial role especially in pushing forward much-needed public or publicly subsidised housing projects after Independence, comprising provision of dwellings for Muslim refugees from India and especially for the employees of the new provincial government. In 1987, RAJUK superseded the Dhaka Trust. As the Capital Development Authority, it is responsible for the realisation of the ‘Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan’ (DMDP) for a total development area of 1530 square kilometres. This strategic or structure plan, drawn in 1995 thanks to joint funding from the government and UNDP/UNCHS (UN Habitat), contemplated a 20-year period of implementation (1995-2015) and foresaw that the detailed area plan should be finalised by RAJUK itself. The area plan was submitted in 2009 – only six years before completion of the planning period itself! All the way long, the uncleared ownership relationships and development prescriptions paved the way for corruption, from which not only RAJUK officers took advantage.

The khas or government-owned land all over the city is for example shrinking every day also due to negligence on the part of the Land Ministry‘s records of rights. It has been alleged that officials from the same ministry as well as from the Assistant Commissioner of Land [office appointed to conduct the relevant surveys] took over khas land illegally. Their knowledge of the exact location and status of the lands turns into a perfect earning opportunity, as especially land developers make best use of such information.

On Dhaka‘s outlying areas – to the east and west alongside the rivers –, that are below 0.5 meter above the sea level, the formation of wetlands like those that can still be found east to Kolkata was typical. These used to be connected by natural canals whose confluence, particularly after the monsoon, created vast lake-like water masses. The strategic plan recommended maintaining such areas as a measure to prevent floods and to consciously protect existing water catchment sites in the new residential areas for high income and middle income group, as well as on the land owned by the military and police forces, for the same purpose.

Nowadays, having taken possession, at times under illicit conditions, of most of the attractive sites in the inner city, land developers are increasingly focussing their investment on still available fringe areas, where the majorly low-lying land, according to the planning prescriptions, should be kept free to repair the city from floods. As a study carried out for the Strategic Transport Plan in 2004 showed, meanwhile most of these vacant lands are occupied by almost thirty large scale land developer companies. They are now being sold, plot-wise, for construction of residential complexes for high and middle income groups.

To date, there are no official figures on Dhaka‘s land-use patterns. On the basis of a generalised land-use map compiled in 1996, residential use in the 306 square kilometres Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA) has been stated to cover 265 square kilometres. Very low density (100-300 persons/hectare) characterises areas reserved to the upper income groups, while in the lower income groups‘ areas it reaches 1,500 up to 4,000 persons/hectare. The high income groups‘ residential areas are well demarcated, planned and generally developed by the city development authorities. Nevertheless, along with urbanisation a majority of ponds and low lands as well as portions of water areas on the edges of lakes and canals have been filled up for the construction of new residential buildings; only some of the waterfront areas are conserved and maintained with walkways. Dhanmondi, Uttara, Gulshan, Banani and Baridhara lakes, the remains of former canals, are increasingly used as storm water and drainage outfalls; in Dhanmondi and Gulshan, lease of lake water for fish cultivation is allowed. Boating is another permitted activity, though only few people take advantage from it.

Land in the middle-income residential areas spread over old and new parts of the city is, though mostly planned, predominantly mixed used. Rare ponds can still be found, as the majority has been largely filled up, along with the low lands. Additionally, the few remaining canals and low lands are often encroached on by residents or squatters and due to the poor maintenance as well as increasing pollution caused by garbage dumping, their environmental quality is degraded.

Ultimately, the poor live prominently in slum and squatter settlements all over the city. Slums are permanent, in the sense that land owners are mostly private people who have an interest to rent the degraded huts, whereas squatter settlements occupy government or private land illegally and are temporary in nature. In 2005, about 4,950 thereof were identified in DMA area. Especially squatter settlements can be found along water bodies and low lands, on marshy lands within or close to flood zones. Beside the embankments, a growing number of dwellings have been erected on stilts, occupying the water beds. The polluted water below these settlements poses severe constraints to health and it should not be forgotten that not only children of these communities live with water, swimming and playing in it; also adults use water from low lands, lakes and rivers for washing and bathing throughout the year. Eventually, this social group‘s relationship to water, which is an innate feature of rural life in Bangladesh, even in the deplorable environmental conditions they find in the urban setting: during the monsoon period, they can be seen using the water ways for communication.

A closer examination of the distribution of squatter and slum settlements in Dhaka attracts attention on the fact that these are especially located near water bodies. Such areas, occupying government land, are prone to annual flooding occurring in concomitance with the rainy season and in general subject to erosion as well as water logging due to poor drainage condition, hence they are generally not in use. Other than in the West, where river fronts have been treated and are generally used as the best part of a city, river training was never or very partially realised in Dhaka, so the rich avoided these areas as vulnerable or disaster-prone. Since the massive use of road transport, the State neglected the rivers around Dhaka as ways of communication and allowed the riversides to be misused. The same is the case in other cities of Bangladesh, where the riversides did not even experience the short boom that the Mughal brought in, at least for a certain period, in Dhaka.

This is how, with the strong immigration from the countryside and the overall unplanned urban development over the last 30 years, the mostly abandoned and unused riverside lands were found readily available by the poorer migrants, who built their settlements here. Yet parallel to this process water bodies like tanks, ponds, low-lands and ditches progressively fell victim of investment for real estate development. Encroachment, land filling and construction of box culverts for the construction of new roads destroyed the canals that historically criss-crossed Dhaka. Such a development does not only affect the city‘s climate and environment negatively, but also has had implications for housing, since the occupied spaces, especially the wetlands, used to be abodes of the poorer population groups. As these are now turning into commercial areas, it is increasingly difficult for the latter group to find shelter in a city that does need, but not want them.

The government has shown no intent to move forward the implementation of a national housing programme. Policies unfortunately existing only on paper state that small housing units for low income groups shall be built in the city in proportion to the number of inhabitants concerned. The details about such projects, which would be financed through a “hire-purchase system’’ to make the allottees eventually homeowners, have never been publicly declared. What is at any rate visible is that current plans reserve only a small share of land for LIG housing: only 4.34% in the new planned township of Purbachal; 7.55% in the currently running third phase of Uttara Model Town (comprising a total development area of 2 sq. km); mere 1.2% in the proposed plan for Jhilmil residential area in the South of Dhaka.

Differently from Kolkata, cooperative forms never took off in Dhaka, thus land ownership is only either private or public. With regard to housing, the coexistence of two systems – formal and informal – with a preponderance of informal modes (60% against 40%) is typical for Dhaka like many other megacities in the world. Especially the poorer sections of society have little or no alternative to seeking shelter in the informal sector. Only 6% of the housing units available for this group are provided by the government or at least by private owners renting out premises on a legal basis. The rest consists of dwellings built illegally. In particular, 20% is rented out by private owners without authorisation, 80% stand on public land, built by individuals or groups in squatter settlements. Over the years, some of these settlements have gone under possession of power groups who took control of the lands and became ‘de-facto landowners’, collecting ever-increasing rents from the dwellers. Owing to the high population pressure and the limited housing stock, also middle-income groups must increasingly rely on informal housing. In 2007, it provided one third of the total housing units available for this segment of society. Also in this case, the owners are private landlords that build and rent premises with no official authorisation.

Beyond delaying over any limit the submission of a detailed area plan, RAJUK proved unable to implement the general provisions of the plan and to control urban growth at all. Indeed, informal developments spread because too many in Dhaka do not apply for construction permit at all and thus no planning clearance can take place. Yet between 2007 and 2008, during the caretaker government rule, demolitions of illegal constructions became a regular practice: a proof that RAJUK as an agency can exercise its power when it is backed by a willing government.

The caretaker government also decided that Hatirjheel, a former wetland that, over the years, had been completely filled up with urban waste, be given back to the city. The wetland, occupied among others by the five-star hotel Sonargaon and the powerful Bangladesh Garment Manufactures and Exporters Association (BGMEA), is currently being renatured. In the 90s, a similar intervention gave shape to the beloved Dhanmondi Lake and boosted urban upgrading in the homonym residential area. The implementation of this recent provision could not only repeat the old success story, but has a strong symbolic value as it shows that what was considered lost can be recovered. However, while the restoration works are taking place and urban design as well as landscaping proposals for a Ring Road, a service lane and bridges around and over the water body are being submitted, the issue of rehabilitation of former inhabitants, mainly poor, has hardly been solved. Although it is clear that, after the completion of the works, different groups of society will move in, the new government‘s promises of compensation and allotment of new land to the former dwellers are ambiguous and non-transparent. Many of them already left without receiving any support.

The same issue will have to be faced with regard to the, currently starting, World Bank-funded project of re-excavation of 15 canals all along the city. The process of re-excavation, itself very difficult and expensive, is particularly critical as it implicates the demolishing of various unauthorised structures as well as the resettlement of squatters. Such examples point out that urban development continues to be a double-sided issue in Dhaka due to the fact that a pro-poor mentality and corresponding policies are missing. As if this were not enough, new pressure derives from the spread of neoliberalism in Bangladesh. Especially in the last decade, investment opportunities in the free trade system have opened avenues for use and misuse of both public and private land. Not only are industrial estates and multi-purpose complexes, realised in joint venture with national and multinational investors, mushrooming in Dhaka. “Public Private Partnerships” are meanwhile a proven format also for residential construction, with some 3,500 flats for government employees built in this way since 2005 and around 4,500 additional ones already planned in different areas of the city. No need to say, these endeavours never have the provision of housing for the poorer sections of society in their agenda.

In sum, Dhaka is far away from DMDP‘s vision, which planned a city with water to be used for all purposes – from flood control to recreation. Unauthorised uses by all income groups have encroached water bodies and made them mostly unusable if not even non-existent. Against this background, it is high time for politicians and administrators to make their choice – which, this is also clear, will be spanned between neoliberal interests and international donors‘ pretensions.