Exploring the social spaces of organic and planned neighbourhoods of Dhaka

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to search for the social spaces of the inhabitants within the planned and organic neighbourhoods of Dhaka. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh has gone through a massive physical development in the last few decades and has faced changes and adjustments in its growth pattern due to socio-cultural, geo-climatical, technological and economic influences. The city with a high density due to the growth rate and migrating population from all over the country has a huge demand for housing and physical infrastructure. Beside the existing organic development, planned residential areas are dominating the market to serve this growing need. Both these types of neighbourhoods are the grounds of for the inhabitants’ lifecycle being nourished. The characters of these spaces vary in organic and planned residential area in terms of physical form and also in extent of activities and social interaction taking place in them. It is often speculated that the social needs of the inhabitants of these two types of neighbourhoods are not equally fulfilled and thus study is needed to dig deep into this matter. This paper is a reflection of a long time observation of the author and further research interest into this matter generates the need to identify the gap through this paper. This study tries to search for the spaces and the extent of interaction in the planned and organic neighbourhood and investigate the consistencies and variances within them through a comparative study between an organically grown and a planned neighbourhood in Dhaka.