Building urban resilience : an unplanned built-up area in Dhaka

Abstract

The prevalence of continual increase of population, poor construction standards, lack of law enforcement and monitoring, construction on filled up canals and water bodies as well as unplanned growth in hazard prone areas in Dhaka is turning the whole city into a source of potential hazards. As a result, both the built up and growing areas possess great risks of hazardous incidents like fire, water logging, collapse of structures, and earthquake etc. This paper emphasizes the need to address the risks in unplanned built up areas and takes into account an area (part of ward No. 14 & 15) as a case with prior illustration of context of Dhaka city. It analyzes vulnerabilities of the area in terms of infrastructures exposed to risks like fire and earthquake etc and emergency response. Finally it aims to develop some notions towards building resilience and as an outcome it recommends some short, medium and long term action plans. Among the actions it prioritizes recovery of connectivity and open spaces within the area in order to ensure minimum safety. Methodology of the whole process includes literature review, analyzing secondary data, and primary data collection from site through observation and conversation with the local residents.