Smart planning for Dhaka city

Dhaka has been ranked one of the worst cities in the world to live in, and there is no shortage of city dwellers ready to lament the deplorable conditions of life in Dhaka city to confirm that fact. We have previously written about the all too familiar urban problems of traffic congestions and waterlogging in Dhaka, and even discussed the reasons for it -- poor infrastructure, land encroachment, filling up of canals, to name a few. But the problem is not with a lack of planning; it is the failure to execute the plans as intended. Historically speaking, for as long as there have been formal urban plans for the city, Dhaka has done a great job of ignoring them. Patchwork planning and development have done us no favours either. If anything, these disjointed and sporadic spurts of growth have left us worse off. Moreover, any comprehensive plan for Dhaka must be coupled with parallel plans of areas outside Dhaka to make way for decentralisation -- something that experts insist is absolutely necessary for Dhaka to remain habitable. The government has an active and vital role to play in all this: It must provide the right incentives to the right people for the right kind of development. We should know by now that a plan without an effective incentive mechanism is bound to fail in Dhaka city, and complaining about how no one follows instructions or rules isn’t going to help. We need planners to be one step ahead of everyone, to understand the dynamics of the city, and to plan accordingly; we need them to be efficient, innovative, and pragmatic. We need smart planning by smart people.