Nagar Bhaban, Headquarters of the City of Dhaka
A Future Mayor's Manifesto
Sustainable Urbanism is about breaking down barriers between nature-focused environmentalists and human-focused urbanists. We would like to assert that we need a radical change in how we live, not just for the health of our planet, but for ourselves. Our ambitious goal is to make sustainable urbanism the dominant pattern of human settlement in the City of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, by 2020. We aim to advance a more organic way of life that is more in tune with the environment. We want to integrate architecture, city planning and nature for a better way of life. We want to design and build places that are environmentally responsible and also gratifying to inhabit. We want to combine the creation and enhancement of walkable and diverse places with the need to build high-performance infrastructure and buildings. We need standards and regulations to get us to where we need to go in terms of urban lifestyle. We should be able to implement sustainable urbanism through leadership and communication in cities, communities, and neighborhoods. Our primary objectives are:
1) Increasing sustainability through density.
2) Integrating transportation and land use.
3) Renaming Dhaka City Corporation as the City of Dhaka and recommending the Government of Bangladesh to administratively reorganize Rajuk and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police under the City of Dhaka.
4) Creating sustainable neighborhoods, including well-planned housing based on residential zoning law; rickshaw-free areas, hawker-free sidewalks, billboard-free residential neighborhoods, and decommercialization of residential areas based on strict enforcement of the zoning laws in the city of Dhaka.
5) Regulating the construction of poorly planned high-rise buildings deemed as high risk to the city of Dhaka in unforeseen events of natural disaster such as an eartquake.
6) Demolishing risky and poorly constructed high-rise buildings and apartment complexes based on the example set by the Bangladesh Supreme Court order to demolish the Rangs tower.
7) Establishing Dhaka Metropolitan Transport Authority to govern the flow of transportation on road, water, air, rail and future subway and transit facilities.
8) Creating employment opportunities and temporary low-income shelters for the homeless on the outskirts of the city and outlawing begging practices on the streets of the city.
9) Imposing high indirect taxation on all garments factories within the city limits of Dhaka, forcing them to relocate outside the city limits.
10) Establishing a uniform code for all signposts within city limits and prohinbiting corporate sponsors from using storefront signposts as corporate billboards.
11) Establishing a public library in every ward of the city of Dhaka and organizing public lectures for adults, entertainment for the children and early childhood education for the preschoolers.
12) Constructing bikepaths all over the city of Dhaka and promoting bicycling as a popular mode of transportation.
13) Providing the health and environmental benefits of linking humans to nature, including walk-to open spaces, public parks and waste treatment.
14) Introducing regulation and fines for sound pollution and prohibiting public uses of sound amplifiers that create loud noises in residential neighborhoods.
15) Banning smoking in all restaurants and public places of the city.
16) Making it mandatory to have small hybrid cars and battery operated cars of 1400cc or less by 2013. Banning all cars above 1400cc in the city of Dhaka.
17) Relocating the tannery industry from Hazaribaag to Savar as soon as possible. Imposing very high taxation or fines if relocation is not completed within 90 days of my taking office as the Mayor of Dhaka.
18) Construction of embankment and footpath with trees on the shores of the river Buriganga to prevent land grab. Construction of South beach (Miami) type riverfront recreation facilities along the river Buriganga to attract tourists.
19) Construction of embankment and footpath with trees on the shores of Hateer-jheel to prevent land grab. Construction of lakeside waterpark and restaurants to attract tourists.
20) Introducing park-police, park-rangers and environment-police, recruited from the city’s unemployed section of the population and from street urchins, training and educating them on environment.
21) Detail Area Plan (DAP) and the masterplan for the entire City of Dhaka within six months of my taking office.
22) Testing groundwater levels for the City of Dhaka and taking whatever action is necessary, including prohibiting deep tube-wells, if necessary.
23) Making wealth reporting a criteria for auction and tender participation for all contractors and reporting the corrupt ones to Duduk. Requiring clearance of Duduk and NBR for credit defaulters and tax dodging contractors and making it a policy to not give city corporation contracts to loan defaulters, tax dodgers, and corrupt contractors. Signing pact with Duduk and NBR for these necessary actions.
24) Charging all property developers lump sum taxation and high fees for occupying Dhaka City Corporation’s residential frontspaces (spaces that belong to the City Corporation in front of all buildings) for storing bricks, sands and other building raw materials.
25) Making sure all water bodies within the City of Dhaka are clean and enforcing all relevant laws to maintain these water bodies.
26) Importing 3000 Sakura cherry trees from Japan and planting them in the embankment along the two sides of the river Buriganga, constructing a long riverside bikepath and sidewalk for joggers and walkers.
27) Establishing occupancy limits for all dwellings in Dhaka city based on groundwater consumption level per head (i.e. no more than 5 persons per flat; no more than 10 persons per bigha).
28) Defining rights and privileges in the City of Dhaka, insisting that it is a privilege to live in the City of Dhaka and not a right.
29) Insisting that driving in the city of Dhaka is a privilege and not a right.
30) Making it a mandatory requirement for all foreign companies (including foreign partners and joint ventures), investors and foreign nationals, to obtain a special type of trade license from the City of Dhaka. This special type of trade license would make it an absolute prerequisite for any foreign company or collaboration to have their respective governments be their guarantors for all their dealings in Bangladesh, as a precautionary measure against any breaches of contract, abuses of sovereignty of Bangladesh or any international misdemeanour of civil nature by these foreign companies or collaborations.
31) All NGOs in the City of Dhaka selling any kind of product will be required to obtain a special kind of trade license from the City of Dhaka that will only be issued to them after periodic inspection of their performance under the terms of their current trade license agreement. A wealth report of all NGO heads must be submitted, scrutinized and pre-approved before any trade license is issued to any Non-governmental organization in Bangladesh. The City of Dhaka would particularly like to revoke trade licenses of all non-governmental organizations that function as profit-making private sector enterprises in the shadow of a privileged non-profit NGO sector evading taxation and hurting the people of Bangladesh.
32) All banks operating within the limits of the City of Dhaka that sanction commercial loans that are unfriendly to the environment of Dhaka or have been found to finance commercial projects by property developers who violated the environmental standards of the City of Dhaka will have their trade licenses revoked, suspended and cancelled by joint consideration of the Bangladesh Bank and the City of Dhaka.
33) Any property developer in the City of Dhaka that fails to meet the environmental standards set by the City of Dhaka will be blacklisted for 10 years and will be barred from undertaking any kind of construction project in the City of Dhaka.
34) A modern garbage disposal system will be put in place in the City of Dhaka. All residents of Dhaka will be provided with a blue bin for daily garbage and a green bin for recycling items. The resident users will be charged for the new garbage disposal and recycling system as a part of their local holding charges billed by the City of Dhaka.
35) Mandatory recycling will be introduced in the City of Dhaka and along with it, a system of prohibitions and fines for litter control.
36) Outlawing leaves burning and burning of any kind within premises as fire hazard.
37) Outlawing slaughtering practices on all premises, both public and private. Establishing City Corporation's slaughter houses and meat processing and packaging centers in every ward for efficient handling of daily meat supply to bazars and for the annual Korbani animal sacrifices without allowing animal waste and pollution from causing unsanitary conditions in public and private spaces of the city.
38) Installing metered parking and constructing new multi-storied parking garages in various parts of the city.
39) Making employers responsible for employee housing and cancelling trade licenses of employers (e.g. garments) who would like to operate their businesses in a crowded part of the city, knowing it fully well that their employees have no place to stay in the city or cannot pay for housing and they have to live in slums in the city center in order to work in the middle of the city.
Note: The right to life included the right to livelihood. As livelihood of the poor depends directly on where they live, the employers have an obligation to provide affordable housing within 2 miles of radius of reasonable commute. Since affordable housing is not available to garments workers within 2 miles of commute in Gulshan, there can be no garments factory in Gulshan. If there are, they should be closed.
40) As part of the marriage-divorce registration systems reform and modernization plan, eliminate the Kazi system and introduce modern booths with Islamic Studies Masters degree holders to act as City Corporation Marriage Counselors.
41) To discourage matrimonial opportunism and to maintain social equilibrium, introduce a new non-binding marriage registration program whereby those who wish to participate in this program will be able to (with the consent of his or her daughter) sign up in this program and not have the marriage registered immediately and will have to wait for a 3 monthly probationary period to have the marriage registered. In this probationary period, if the bride and the groom decide that they will not be in the marriage, they can inform the marriage registrar to cancel the marriage registration and both the bride and the groom will have to wait for 5 years to register any marriage. However, when a request for marriage registration is formally made, the parents and the guardians of the bride and the groom will be officially called and unless all parties formally consent to the marriage, no marriage will be registered. Participation in this program can only happen with the written agreement and consent of the prospective bride and groom as early as age 17. This is just a matrimonial and social-status-security system to check and balance and to prevent all unintended love marriages among social, economic and religious unequals that create social disequilibrium through actions of matrimonial opportunism. This program will be absolutely non-binding and only available to those citizens of Dhaka that are interested.
42) Initiate a public arts project, a public history project and a national landmarks project for the City of Dhaka by setting up a Public Arts Commission, Public History Commission and National Landmarks Commission under the City of Dhaka.
43) Create an independent ethics committee to oversee corrupt practices of Dhaka City ward commissioners and create a list of juries and a jury board from the citizens of Dhaka to randomly call to serve in the Mayor’s independent ethics committee. If and when commissioners are found guilty, refer them to Duduk and the Ministry of Local Government's disciplinary body to cancel their commissioner position and to hold re-election in those positions. Also, create a telephone/email hotline and other documentation mechanism for documenting complaints against ward commissioners and install a grievance procedure.
44) Create an office to overlook sexual harassment and discrimination practices in the workplace. Install a complaints procedure and document all investigated cases to respective authorities, canceling trade licenses of guilty organizations in violation of the appropriate laws, codes of conduct and norms of civil behaviour.
45) Operate all markets and bazars within specific day hours only during the SSC and HSC public examination weeks to provide extra electricity to students in Dhaka city who need uninterrupted electricity to study for their exams.
46) Create a new Road Safety Authority or Mayor’s Task Force on Road Safety funded by taxes on fuel.
47) In order to discourage sequential polygamy in Dhaka society, introduce a new critera for re-marriage registration. By virtue of this new criteria of re-marriage registration in case of death of a spouse, an individual will be allowed to register his or her re-marriage for only once and he or she will require a life insurance for the second spouse. No subsequent marriages will be registered for this one time remarried person to discourage sequential polygamy. Revoke all marriage licenses of second marriages due to death of a spouse and require these people to re-register their marriages with life insurances for their spouse.
48) Computerize birth and death registration and make it completely transparent over the internet, protected by password.
49) Issue holding charge credit (up to 10 percent) for reporting corruption of ward commissioners and City Corporation employees if they are found guilty after an investigation based on corruption complaints filed by the citizens of Dhaka. Create a corruption prevention scheme.
50) Plan and execute an operation called 'Operation Buriganga' with the help of the army (just like the “Operation Clean Heart” in the past) to clean up all land grabs on the shores of the river Buriganga.
51) Introduce Community Police in every neighborhood of the City of Dhaka and create Neighborhood Watch Areas for micro-managment of law, order and disputes in each community.
52) Promote the idea of an integrated community and develop an integrated community life through mandatory school districting of all private, public, international and parochial schools in the City of Dhaka. Only allow a particular school to admit a certain number of students from the district in which it is located. Through mandatory verification of address by scrutinizing utility bills, make sure that a school does not admit students from an area where it is not located. Allow only a certain number of schools in a certain area that meets the schooling demand of the area. Revoke licenses of all schools (particularly private, international and parochial ones) that is situated in an area with no surplus of students in that school district available for schooling but has a deficit of schooling opportunities for students in another school district.
53) No foreign embassy in Dhaka or their staff will be allowed any leniency to open or operate any private business in the City of Dhaka, including opening and operating international schools and clubs for profit.
54) International schools will not be allowed to recruit local students and children of expatriates or foreign office bureaucrats. They will not be allowed to recruit staff from any other country outside the country they represent.
55) All foreigners and nonresidents in Dhaka will have to pay additional fees for using public parks, public recreation facilities and other public resources in the City of Dhaka. No foreign mission in Dhaka will be exempt from city corporation fees and charges outside those permitted by the Geneva convention.
56) To ensure the safety and security of life and property of all citizens in the City of Dhaka, an earthquake surcharge will be levied on all high rise and multi-storied buildings in Dhaka based on earthquake risk assessment but no less than 20 percent of the total rent of each floor of every high-rise building above 6 floors.
57) Making it legally mandatory for all individuals working on or above the 6th floor of any high-rise building to carry life insurance and penalizing any company, organization and individual that fails to comply with this order through cancellation of any operating trade licenses.
57) Prohibiting mobile phone companies to sell mobile phones to under age children in the City of Dhaka or to advertise for mobile phones using underage children (below 18).
58) Prohibiting mobile telephone companies to sell mobile phones to prosecuted criminals, listed criminal offenders and to all individuals against whom there is a pending FIR or GD.
59) Within 90 days of my taking office, the City of Dhaka will introduce a new computerized database of all sex offenders, child molesters, rapists and sexual harassment offenders who have been found guilty by the court. This computerized list will be made public through the internet.
60) Dhaka City Corporation will introduce a new education wing. This wing will publish annual rankings of all schools, colleges and universities in Dhaka. In addition, this wing will carry on survey and prepare statistical reports of all educational data across demographics from Dhaka City’s educational institutions and make recommendations to the Mayor on high school dropouts, street urchin education status, standards of quality of schools and colleges in the City of Dhaka.
In order to do a ranking of the schools, colleges and universities in the City of Dhaka, Dhaka City Corporation will have a comprehensive computer survey site for Rank-your-teachers and Rank your professors. These rankings will be available online to all students of the City of Dhaka. Recommendations will be made and public campaign will be launched on the basis of data and information obtained from this project.
1) Increasing sustainability through density.
2) Integrating transportation and land use.
3) Renaming Dhaka City Corporation as the City of Dhaka and recommending the Government of Bangladesh to administratively reorganize Rajuk and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police under the City of Dhaka.
4) Creating sustainable neighborhoods, including well-planned housing based on residential zoning law; rickshaw-free areas, hawker-free sidewalks, billboard-free residential neighborhoods, and decommercialization of residential areas based on strict enforcement of the zoning laws in the city of Dhaka.
5) Regulating the construction of poorly planned high-rise buildings deemed as high risk to the city of Dhaka in unforeseen events of natural disaster such as an eartquake.
6) Demolishing risky and poorly constructed high-rise buildings and apartment complexes based on the example set by the Bangladesh Supreme Court order to demolish the Rangs tower.
7) Establishing Dhaka Metropolitan Transport Authority to govern the flow of transportation on road, water, air, rail and future subway and transit facilities.
8) Creating employment opportunities and temporary low-income shelters for the homeless on the outskirts of the city and outlawing begging practices on the streets of the city.
9) Imposing high indirect taxation on all garments factories within the city limits of Dhaka, forcing them to relocate outside the city limits.
10) Establishing a uniform code for all signposts within city limits and prohinbiting corporate sponsors from using storefront signposts as corporate billboards.
11) Establishing a public library in every ward of the city of Dhaka and organizing public lectures for adults, entertainment for the children and early childhood education for the preschoolers.
12) Constructing bikepaths all over the city of Dhaka and promoting bicycling as a popular mode of transportation.
13) Providing the health and environmental benefits of linking humans to nature, including walk-to open spaces, public parks and waste treatment.
14) Introducing regulation and fines for sound pollution and prohibiting public uses of sound amplifiers that create loud noises in residential neighborhoods.
15) Banning smoking in all restaurants and public places of the city.
16) Making it mandatory to have small hybrid cars and battery operated cars of 1400cc or less by 2013. Banning all cars above 1400cc in the city of Dhaka.
17) Relocating the tannery industry from Hazaribaag to Savar as soon as possible. Imposing very high taxation or fines if relocation is not completed within 90 days of my taking office as the Mayor of Dhaka.
18) Construction of embankment and footpath with trees on the shores of the river Buriganga to prevent land grab. Construction of South beach (Miami) type riverfront recreation facilities along the river Buriganga to attract tourists.
19) Construction of embankment and footpath with trees on the shores of Hateer-jheel to prevent land grab. Construction of lakeside waterpark and restaurants to attract tourists.
20) Introducing park-police, park-rangers and environment-police, recruited from the city’s unemployed section of the population and from street urchins, training and educating them on environment.
21) Detail Area Plan (DAP) and the masterplan for the entire City of Dhaka within six months of my taking office.
22) Testing groundwater levels for the City of Dhaka and taking whatever action is necessary, including prohibiting deep tube-wells, if necessary.
23) Making wealth reporting a criteria for auction and tender participation for all contractors and reporting the corrupt ones to Duduk. Requiring clearance of Duduk and NBR for credit defaulters and tax dodging contractors and making it a policy to not give city corporation contracts to loan defaulters, tax dodgers, and corrupt contractors. Signing pact with Duduk and NBR for these necessary actions.
24) Charging all property developers lump sum taxation and high fees for occupying Dhaka City Corporation’s residential frontspaces (spaces that belong to the City Corporation in front of all buildings) for storing bricks, sands and other building raw materials.
25) Making sure all water bodies within the City of Dhaka are clean and enforcing all relevant laws to maintain these water bodies.
26) Importing 3000 Sakura cherry trees from Japan and planting them in the embankment along the two sides of the river Buriganga, constructing a long riverside bikepath and sidewalk for joggers and walkers.
27) Establishing occupancy limits for all dwellings in Dhaka city based on groundwater consumption level per head (i.e. no more than 5 persons per flat; no more than 10 persons per bigha).
28) Defining rights and privileges in the City of Dhaka, insisting that it is a privilege to live in the City of Dhaka and not a right.
29) Insisting that driving in the city of Dhaka is a privilege and not a right.
30) Making it a mandatory requirement for all foreign companies (including foreign partners and joint ventures), investors and foreign nationals, to obtain a special type of trade license from the City of Dhaka. This special type of trade license would make it an absolute prerequisite for any foreign company or collaboration to have their respective governments be their guarantors for all their dealings in Bangladesh, as a precautionary measure against any breaches of contract, abuses of sovereignty of Bangladesh or any international misdemeanour of civil nature by these foreign companies or collaborations.
31) All NGOs in the City of Dhaka selling any kind of product will be required to obtain a special kind of trade license from the City of Dhaka that will only be issued to them after periodic inspection of their performance under the terms of their current trade license agreement. A wealth report of all NGO heads must be submitted, scrutinized and pre-approved before any trade license is issued to any Non-governmental organization in Bangladesh. The City of Dhaka would particularly like to revoke trade licenses of all non-governmental organizations that function as profit-making private sector enterprises in the shadow of a privileged non-profit NGO sector evading taxation and hurting the people of Bangladesh.
32) All banks operating within the limits of the City of Dhaka that sanction commercial loans that are unfriendly to the environment of Dhaka or have been found to finance commercial projects by property developers who violated the environmental standards of the City of Dhaka will have their trade licenses revoked, suspended and cancelled by joint consideration of the Bangladesh Bank and the City of Dhaka.
33) Any property developer in the City of Dhaka that fails to meet the environmental standards set by the City of Dhaka will be blacklisted for 10 years and will be barred from undertaking any kind of construction project in the City of Dhaka.
34) A modern garbage disposal system will be put in place in the City of Dhaka. All residents of Dhaka will be provided with a blue bin for daily garbage and a green bin for recycling items. The resident users will be charged for the new garbage disposal and recycling system as a part of their local holding charges billed by the City of Dhaka.
35) Mandatory recycling will be introduced in the City of Dhaka and along with it, a system of prohibitions and fines for litter control.
36) Outlawing leaves burning and burning of any kind within premises as fire hazard.
37) Outlawing slaughtering practices on all premises, both public and private. Establishing City Corporation's slaughter houses and meat processing and packaging centers in every ward for efficient handling of daily meat supply to bazars and for the annual Korbani animal sacrifices without allowing animal waste and pollution from causing unsanitary conditions in public and private spaces of the city.
38) Installing metered parking and constructing new multi-storied parking garages in various parts of the city.
39) Making employers responsible for employee housing and cancelling trade licenses of employers (e.g. garments) who would like to operate their businesses in a crowded part of the city, knowing it fully well that their employees have no place to stay in the city or cannot pay for housing and they have to live in slums in the city center in order to work in the middle of the city.
Note: The right to life included the right to livelihood. As livelihood of the poor depends directly on where they live, the employers have an obligation to provide affordable housing within 2 miles of radius of reasonable commute. Since affordable housing is not available to garments workers within 2 miles of commute in Gulshan, there can be no garments factory in Gulshan. If there are, they should be closed.
40) As part of the marriage-divorce registration systems reform and modernization plan, eliminate the Kazi system and introduce modern booths with Islamic Studies Masters degree holders to act as City Corporation Marriage Counselors.
41) To discourage matrimonial opportunism and to maintain social equilibrium, introduce a new non-binding marriage registration program whereby those who wish to participate in this program will be able to (with the consent of his or her daughter) sign up in this program and not have the marriage registered immediately and will have to wait for a 3 monthly probationary period to have the marriage registered. In this probationary period, if the bride and the groom decide that they will not be in the marriage, they can inform the marriage registrar to cancel the marriage registration and both the bride and the groom will have to wait for 5 years to register any marriage. However, when a request for marriage registration is formally made, the parents and the guardians of the bride and the groom will be officially called and unless all parties formally consent to the marriage, no marriage will be registered. Participation in this program can only happen with the written agreement and consent of the prospective bride and groom as early as age 17. This is just a matrimonial and social-status-security system to check and balance and to prevent all unintended love marriages among social, economic and religious unequals that create social disequilibrium through actions of matrimonial opportunism. This program will be absolutely non-binding and only available to those citizens of Dhaka that are interested.
42) Initiate a public arts project, a public history project and a national landmarks project for the City of Dhaka by setting up a Public Arts Commission, Public History Commission and National Landmarks Commission under the City of Dhaka.
43) Create an independent ethics committee to oversee corrupt practices of Dhaka City ward commissioners and create a list of juries and a jury board from the citizens of Dhaka to randomly call to serve in the Mayor’s independent ethics committee. If and when commissioners are found guilty, refer them to Duduk and the Ministry of Local Government's disciplinary body to cancel their commissioner position and to hold re-election in those positions. Also, create a telephone/email hotline and other documentation mechanism for documenting complaints against ward commissioners and install a grievance procedure.
44) Create an office to overlook sexual harassment and discrimination practices in the workplace. Install a complaints procedure and document all investigated cases to respective authorities, canceling trade licenses of guilty organizations in violation of the appropriate laws, codes of conduct and norms of civil behaviour.
45) Operate all markets and bazars within specific day hours only during the SSC and HSC public examination weeks to provide extra electricity to students in Dhaka city who need uninterrupted electricity to study for their exams.
46) Create a new Road Safety Authority or Mayor’s Task Force on Road Safety funded by taxes on fuel.
47) In order to discourage sequential polygamy in Dhaka society, introduce a new critera for re-marriage registration. By virtue of this new criteria of re-marriage registration in case of death of a spouse, an individual will be allowed to register his or her re-marriage for only once and he or she will require a life insurance for the second spouse. No subsequent marriages will be registered for this one time remarried person to discourage sequential polygamy. Revoke all marriage licenses of second marriages due to death of a spouse and require these people to re-register their marriages with life insurances for their spouse.
48) Computerize birth and death registration and make it completely transparent over the internet, protected by password.
49) Issue holding charge credit (up to 10 percent) for reporting corruption of ward commissioners and City Corporation employees if they are found guilty after an investigation based on corruption complaints filed by the citizens of Dhaka. Create a corruption prevention scheme.
50) Plan and execute an operation called 'Operation Buriganga' with the help of the army (just like the “Operation Clean Heart” in the past) to clean up all land grabs on the shores of the river Buriganga.
51) Introduce Community Police in every neighborhood of the City of Dhaka and create Neighborhood Watch Areas for micro-managment of law, order and disputes in each community.
52) Promote the idea of an integrated community and develop an integrated community life through mandatory school districting of all private, public, international and parochial schools in the City of Dhaka. Only allow a particular school to admit a certain number of students from the district in which it is located. Through mandatory verification of address by scrutinizing utility bills, make sure that a school does not admit students from an area where it is not located. Allow only a certain number of schools in a certain area that meets the schooling demand of the area. Revoke licenses of all schools (particularly private, international and parochial ones) that is situated in an area with no surplus of students in that school district available for schooling but has a deficit of schooling opportunities for students in another school district.
53) No foreign embassy in Dhaka or their staff will be allowed any leniency to open or operate any private business in the City of Dhaka, including opening and operating international schools and clubs for profit.
54) International schools will not be allowed to recruit local students and children of expatriates or foreign office bureaucrats. They will not be allowed to recruit staff from any other country outside the country they represent.
55) All foreigners and nonresidents in Dhaka will have to pay additional fees for using public parks, public recreation facilities and other public resources in the City of Dhaka. No foreign mission in Dhaka will be exempt from city corporation fees and charges outside those permitted by the Geneva convention.
56) To ensure the safety and security of life and property of all citizens in the City of Dhaka, an earthquake surcharge will be levied on all high rise and multi-storied buildings in Dhaka based on earthquake risk assessment but no less than 20 percent of the total rent of each floor of every high-rise building above 6 floors.
57) Making it legally mandatory for all individuals working on or above the 6th floor of any high-rise building to carry life insurance and penalizing any company, organization and individual that fails to comply with this order through cancellation of any operating trade licenses.
57) Prohibiting mobile phone companies to sell mobile phones to under age children in the City of Dhaka or to advertise for mobile phones using underage children (below 18).
58) Prohibiting mobile telephone companies to sell mobile phones to prosecuted criminals, listed criminal offenders and to all individuals against whom there is a pending FIR or GD.
59) Within 90 days of my taking office, the City of Dhaka will introduce a new computerized database of all sex offenders, child molesters, rapists and sexual harassment offenders who have been found guilty by the court. This computerized list will be made public through the internet.
60) Dhaka City Corporation will introduce a new education wing. This wing will publish annual rankings of all schools, colleges and universities in Dhaka. In addition, this wing will carry on survey and prepare statistical reports of all educational data across demographics from Dhaka City’s educational institutions and make recommendations to the Mayor on high school dropouts, street urchin education status, standards of quality of schools and colleges in the City of Dhaka.
In order to do a ranking of the schools, colleges and universities in the City of Dhaka, Dhaka City Corporation will have a comprehensive computer survey site for Rank-your-teachers and Rank your professors. These rankings will be available online to all students of the City of Dhaka. Recommendations will be made and public campaign will be launched on the basis of data and information obtained from this project.
Addressing the problems of urban housing and slums in the City of Dhaka.
Impact of Urban Development and Vulnerability in hazard-prone Dhaka
With the unprecedented rise in the number and severity of natural disasters, large urban settlements have become increasingly vulnerable. Concentration of substandard infrastructure and housing, material assets, and inherent socio-economic inequalities increase susceptibility to disasters in megacities such as Dhaka. In addition to socio-economic and spatial vulnerabilities, the functions and geographical distributions of these settlements create a special concern for disaster risk. Disaster vulnerability in a megacity such as Dhaka are a combination of urban poverty, unsustainable planning and development practices, and substandard urban management systems that work together to add to the risk in these settlements.
The notion of vulnerability to natural hazards in case of a megacity like Dhaka takes the conception of disaster beyond being merely an external impact of a physical event, in a bounded time and place. Modernization and economic development that are commonly favored as the technocratic and scientific solutions to the problem of natural hazards, and its corelated postulate that outside interventions and “development” are solutions to the problems of the developing countries, is widely rejected as means to prevent vulnerability to natural hazards in a megacity as these outside interventions can indeed be counter-productive. Vulnerability is a result of the social, economic, cultural, and educational conditions embedded in societies. This attained vulnerability is also a result of social constructions, and it accumulates over time.
Societies both shape and are shaped by the environment, in a way that space is both socially produced and productive and that it evolves historically rather than being created separately from society. It is for this reason political ecology becomes an important factor in the growth of the city and the well-being of its inhabitants. According to studies of political ecology, environmental vulnerability is correlated to political vulnerability at the global level and it is the causal effect of global political forces that influence marginalization, redistribution of wealth and power, particularly in developing countries with a history of colonization, longstanding crisis of democracy and political turmoil.
The social construction of the notion of natural disaster by the western media as an arm of the developed and geopolitically dominant western world tend to define, project and socially construct even the objective properties such as severity or scope of impact of disasters. In doing so, the developed world maintains power by scientific and political discourse over the underdeveloped world, depicting disasters as purely symbolic events and using these socio-culturally controlled symbolic events to reduce the geopolitical space of Bangladesh or the City of Dhaka to the status of a message, and inhabiting of it to the status of a reading. This is commonly done by the Western countries to evade both history and practice of the people of Bangladesh.
An aerial view of Northwest Dhaka
Vulnerability in Slums and Informal Settlements
Within the last decades, population shift from impoverished rural economies, pressures of globalization, and industrial relocation have contributed to one of the biggest challenges in the large cities of developing countries: expansion of urban areas and creation of unplanned informal settlements as the sole option for newcomers. Even
though informal settlements, squatters, and slums have been with us before, these settlements have grown in numbers and in spatial forms with the increase of the urban poor and their exclusion from formal housing sectors. Along with conditions of urban poverty, informal economy, and challenged urban management systems, these settlements and their residents have become increasingly susceptible to vulnerabilities from fire and natural disasters.
First, most informal settlements carry physical vulnerabilities due to their location or construction practices. These settlements are often “located on land not deemed appropriate for habitation because of its location near a filthy drain or urban sewage system. Slum dwellers and squatters often settle in these dangerous locations as the only option for their livelihoods and survival. Sometimes these slums and informal settlements exist on designated flood-prone area. In the monsoon and the flood season, the slum dwellers are forced to evacuate at least once a year to the busy roadside whilst their shelters are flooded for upwards of one month. The regular flooding is seen as the price to pay for living in the centre of the city at low cost.
Environmental degeneration, loss of rural incomes have contributed to the development of informal settlements in risk prone fringes of Dhaka. In the megacity of Dhaka, 66 percent of the population is reported to live in squatter settlements at risk from flooding and cyclones (Pelling 2003, 28). In most cases, inadequate building materials accompany risk by physical exposure in squatter settlements, as structures are often built with non-permanent materials, such as earthen floors, mud-and-wattle walls or straw roofs. Quick makeshift structures are observed in impromptu urbanizations and sprawls of low-income Dhaka. For instance, the sprawl of the megacity of Dhaka is attributed to the city’s shift of its industrial base from import substituting to export orientation, and relocation of industry from the Tejgaon industrial area to residential areas like Gulshan, Banani and Uttara. A metropolitan city like Dhaka is in fact predominantly a village, a series of villages represented in the shanty structures that permeate the city. Shanty structures derive from village prototypes in rural Bangladesh but are modified by the requirements of space and the availability of materials – plastic, tin, bits of cloth, wood and bricks, which draw on past and present materials. Indeed, according to a recent study, 60% of registered buildings in the city of Dhaka are informal masonry and other non-engineered buildings of light material used in slum areas. Vulnerability of these buildings is so bad that shaking with intensity VII is expected to significantly damage 50% to 75% of them.
Most makeshift squatter settlements built with impermanent or recycled materials belong to the newcomers or to the very poor. In many cases, these settlements lack sanitation, municipal services and infrastructure. In the poorest 20% of the populations in Dhaka, 31% had no water source at residence and 32 % had to share toilets with more than ten households; and 52% had no home waste collection (McGranahan et al. 2005, 67-83). Lack of proper infrastructure facilities and unplanned urbanization schemes combine to create new hazards in informal settlements. As these settlements grow larger and denser, lack of sanitation, clean water and garbage removal, in addition to congested living conditions add to the disaster vulnerability of slum dwellers; resulting in further environmental and health problems. The UN Millennium Task Force on Slum Dwellers report that lack of provision for water and sanitation and high levels of overcrowding contribute to many communicable and non-communicable diseases (from respiratory infections to malaria), injury, and premature deaths (from rapid spread of vaccine preventable diseases) in several urban slums in the megacity of Dhaka (UN Millennium Project 2005, 59-60).
In many informal settlements and peripheral municipalities, vulnerability to natural disasters does not end with such physical exposure or social fragility. Lack or inefficiency of public urban services and institutions—transportation networks, hospitals, fire - or police stations — translate into lack of response capacities at times of disasters. Insecure land titles obtained through developers add to the impossible disaster recovery of these settlers, who can neither obtain government aid nor credit with their illegal titles. Social exclusion, religious minority status, poor education and limited job opportunities add to the loss of income and poverty of these residents, limiting their mobility and resettlement and creating one of the biggest challenges for urban policy making in Dhaka.
though informal settlements, squatters, and slums have been with us before, these settlements have grown in numbers and in spatial forms with the increase of the urban poor and their exclusion from formal housing sectors. Along with conditions of urban poverty, informal economy, and challenged urban management systems, these settlements and their residents have become increasingly susceptible to vulnerabilities from fire and natural disasters.
First, most informal settlements carry physical vulnerabilities due to their location or construction practices. These settlements are often “located on land not deemed appropriate for habitation because of its location near a filthy drain or urban sewage system. Slum dwellers and squatters often settle in these dangerous locations as the only option for their livelihoods and survival. Sometimes these slums and informal settlements exist on designated flood-prone area. In the monsoon and the flood season, the slum dwellers are forced to evacuate at least once a year to the busy roadside whilst their shelters are flooded for upwards of one month. The regular flooding is seen as the price to pay for living in the centre of the city at low cost.
Environmental degeneration, loss of rural incomes have contributed to the development of informal settlements in risk prone fringes of Dhaka. In the megacity of Dhaka, 66 percent of the population is reported to live in squatter settlements at risk from flooding and cyclones (Pelling 2003, 28). In most cases, inadequate building materials accompany risk by physical exposure in squatter settlements, as structures are often built with non-permanent materials, such as earthen floors, mud-and-wattle walls or straw roofs. Quick makeshift structures are observed in impromptu urbanizations and sprawls of low-income Dhaka. For instance, the sprawl of the megacity of Dhaka is attributed to the city’s shift of its industrial base from import substituting to export orientation, and relocation of industry from the Tejgaon industrial area to residential areas like Gulshan, Banani and Uttara. A metropolitan city like Dhaka is in fact predominantly a village, a series of villages represented in the shanty structures that permeate the city. Shanty structures derive from village prototypes in rural Bangladesh but are modified by the requirements of space and the availability of materials – plastic, tin, bits of cloth, wood and bricks, which draw on past and present materials. Indeed, according to a recent study, 60% of registered buildings in the city of Dhaka are informal masonry and other non-engineered buildings of light material used in slum areas. Vulnerability of these buildings is so bad that shaking with intensity VII is expected to significantly damage 50% to 75% of them.
Most makeshift squatter settlements built with impermanent or recycled materials belong to the newcomers or to the very poor. In many cases, these settlements lack sanitation, municipal services and infrastructure. In the poorest 20% of the populations in Dhaka, 31% had no water source at residence and 32 % had to share toilets with more than ten households; and 52% had no home waste collection (McGranahan et al. 2005, 67-83). Lack of proper infrastructure facilities and unplanned urbanization schemes combine to create new hazards in informal settlements. As these settlements grow larger and denser, lack of sanitation, clean water and garbage removal, in addition to congested living conditions add to the disaster vulnerability of slum dwellers; resulting in further environmental and health problems. The UN Millennium Task Force on Slum Dwellers report that lack of provision for water and sanitation and high levels of overcrowding contribute to many communicable and non-communicable diseases (from respiratory infections to malaria), injury, and premature deaths (from rapid spread of vaccine preventable diseases) in several urban slums in the megacity of Dhaka (UN Millennium Project 2005, 59-60).
In many informal settlements and peripheral municipalities, vulnerability to natural disasters does not end with such physical exposure or social fragility. Lack or inefficiency of public urban services and institutions—transportation networks, hospitals, fire - or police stations — translate into lack of response capacities at times of disasters. Insecure land titles obtained through developers add to the impossible disaster recovery of these settlers, who can neither obtain government aid nor credit with their illegal titles. Social exclusion, religious minority status, poor education and limited job opportunities add to the loss of income and poverty of these residents, limiting their mobility and resettlement and creating one of the biggest challenges for urban policy making in Dhaka.
