re-evaluating public space in urban slum: a case of korail basti

Abstract

Slums are the undeniable truth in the urban fabric of developing counties. As per UN Habitat 30 percent of world’s population live in slums and the vast majority of slums are located in and around urban centres. As reference, Korail Basti is Dhaka's biggest slum with a total area of around 110 acres of land. Due to spontaneous growth and density there is no viable public space for the intangible growth of the slum dwellers. But most often this crisis of such huge community is overlooked by providing bare necessities like- infrastructure for water, power, sanitation etc. with over-simplified, short term cheap schemes. However, on the deeper end it always fails to address the intangible needs of this community where cultural, recreational and social interaction can happen. This paper tries to re-evaluate the needs of viable public space in this type of dense urban slums, understand their present features from the existing public usage and analyses the constraints and scopes to incorporate public spaces addressing the challenge of swarming density. This research has been carried out through diagram preparation from GIS mappings, field survey, photographic survey, one to one interview with the locals and questionnaire survey from the slum dwellers. The findings suggest us a clearer vision about the present public domain in Korail, its dependence on slum infrastructure and the local’s aspiration for a better living condition. This paper focuses on the sequential process of understanding public integration, public usage and spatial inclusion of infrastructure and public domain within slums to transform it into consolidated neighbourhoods for the betterment of the city.