Learning from precedents: emerging urban planning practices towards livable communities in Dhaka

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to reveal the shift of thoughts in city planning in terms of livability demonstrated in one of the newly planned satellite towns of Dhaka city. Ever since the emergence of the term 'livable cities' back in 1980’s by IMCL (International Making Cities Livable LLC), considerable amount of research and practice have been oriented towards understanding how the contemporary cities should grow or be planned for livability, in terms of physical, socio-economic and cultural aspects. Cities around the globe demonstrate diversified vision, policies and strategies for achieving these desired goals. This paper takes Dhaka city as a case study to critically investigate the intentions and attempts of urban planning and design practice focused on the livability aspects of the city. The human settlement of Dhaka city can be traced back as early as the 12th century. Till then, the city received attention, negligence, natural calamity, political instability and went through a number of philosophical views as well as planning proposals for its development. In all its efforts, the intrinsic components of livability were much less emphasized due to the major thrust on city’s physical constraint, limited land resources along with negligence in detail area and neighborhood planning. But recent efforts in one of the newly planned satellite town Purbachal shows evidence of change in the traditional paradigm of planning practice. The ultimate objective of this paper is to reveal the points where the proposed master plan of Purbachal succeeded or failed to embrace the principals of livability learnt from earlier precedence of greater Dhaka city. The findings of this paper have been extracted from the studio exercise of Urban Design Studio of the Department of Architecture, University of Asia Pacific. The study was mainly based on case study, examining documented evidence and map & model study along with expert interview.