As one of the most populous cities in the world, Dhaka’s urbanization schemes were perhaps flawed from the very beginning. Not only is our capital city consistently being built on top of itself, it has given way to issues as fundamental as air pollution take a turn for the worse, to the point where the city’s air quality is far too frequently ranked as being the worst in the world.
A recent Dhaka Tribune story centering Savar, an industrial township on the outskirts of Dhaka, and its own unchecked urbanization paints a worrying trend for Bangladesh. According to the story, Savar now stands as a glaring example of how not to urbanize -- its rapid, unplanned growth, marked by encroached rivers, vanishing wetlands, and unchecked industrial pollution, has turned it into a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation.
Savar’s transformation from a peri-urban area into a chaotic industrial-residential hybrid has followed a familiar, destructive pattern: Canals and wetlands, crucial for drainage and biodiversity, have been illegally filled to make way for factories and housing; industries operate with impunity, dumping untreated waste into rivers and farmlands, poisoning water sources, and endangering public health; while regulatory bodies either lack the will or the capacity to enforce laws, allowing land grabbers and polluters to act with complete impunity.
This is not development, or even urbanization for that matter.
For a long time, Bangladesh has been in need of urbanization schemes which prioritize sustainability and quality of life over anything. Stricter zoning and wetland preservation must be enforced and holding industries accountable for egregious operations must also be ensured -- Savar has an inordinate amount of illegal brick kilns, structures which have a direct impact on the degradation of our air quality, for example.
Urbanization should never come at the cost of environmental integrity, and as Bangladesh marches toward greater urbanization, the government, urban planners, and private developers must recognize that sustainability cannot be an afterthought. Our cities must be designed for people, not just profit.
