Feature

An Architect's Dhaka

Dr. Mahbubur Rahman

Part Fourteen

Planned urban development in Bangladesh began in the late fifties with the making of urban development plans for the cities of Dhaka, Chittagong and Khulna between 1959-61. Earlier Patrick Geddes prepared a town improvement report in 1917, which the authority did not adopt. Such incidents have happened again and again. For example, the 1959 Master Plan for Dhaka based on unrealistically low population projection was practically redundant after the Independence that changed the scene. Yet it took the authority till 1981 to prepare a set of development programs which was largely shelved except for the part that provided for sites and services plots for the well-offs.

view of the ruined Nawabaatkhana at the mouth of Dholai Khal

Two other partial planning attempts for the city were made when the British started to expand Dhaka in 1905, and later after 1947 when a British architect under the east Bengal Government made the 'Dhaka Re-Planning'. In all these planning, the authority and planners aspired for the wide landscaped boulevard city which was a concept that developed first in Paris and then in the USA and was based on primarily vehicles with little relevance to slow-moving pedestrianised oriental cities like Dhaka. The organic grain of the city was ignored. However, despite the pervasive pressure of commerce and globalisation, we are still left with some vernacular spaces as much of these plans remain unimplemented.

The Dacca Improvement Trust (DIT) was established in 1956 under the provision of the Town Improvement Act (TIA, 1953), to plan and control the development of Dhaka, Narayanganj and Tongi, which were three separate urban entities with municipalities at that time. In 1959-60 the DIT had a 20-year Master Plan over an area of 610 sq. km (revised to 880 sq. km after independence) prepared by Minoprio, Spencely and PW McFarlane, a British company which in fact undertook such exercises in many developing world cities.

This first full Master Plan for Dhaka did not consider heritage conservation as a component. The Trust implemented very little of this Plan, eventually becoming the largest developer of the country rather than a development control agency forfeiting the trust bestowed on it. Such a contradictory role hindered a democratic growth of the city which the civic society and professionals have been very critical about. On the other hand several attempts to form a powerful metropolitan government since the Independence went futile.

Dhaka continued to expand and develop much on the will and whims of administrators without referring to the Plan or any framework. Yet many such extra-ordinary decisions, for example shifting of the old rail track, or the creation of some major east-west roads, proved to be largely beneficial to the city, which mostly suffers from lack of roads. This was exacerbated by natural topography that forced a finger like northward extension mainly along two corridors, one via Tongi towards Mymensingh and another towards Savar, with intermittent north-south flowing rivers, east-west mostly filled up canals and farmlands in-between.

The Plan designated part of the government farmland to the west of the Tejgaon Airport, where the National Parliament Complex now sits, for housing and allied uses. The area named Ayub Nagar was proposed for building the Provincial Parliament House. The name was later changed to the 'Second Capital' to house the National Parliament Complex of Pakistan, the same way as of making Dhaka the second capital of united Bengal after the annulment of the newly created province of East Bengal and Assam. It was done to appease the Bengalis' rising demand for self-governance since the early 1960s, in the same way of establishing the Dhaka University. During the Mughals too, Dhaka's status was often demeaned out of personal ambitions. After independence the government christened the area Sher e Bangla Nagar.

Kahn's greatest creation, regarded as the monument of the 20C, the National Parliament Building that put Dhaka on the map of world architecture, is at the core of the Nagar.

To its west was erected the Ayub Gate connecting the mainly Urdu-speaking settlers of Mohammedpur with the Capitol complex, appropriately titled 'Citadel of Democracy'. The name of the gate was spontaneously changed to Asad Gate during the 1969 mass uprising in memory of Shahid Asad. There was a small memorial structure erected at the spot where Shahid Asad was killed which I found missing last week while trying to locate that.

Though the parliament building has a vast expand of raised plaza and green lawn mainly on

Armenian Church amidst the hustle and bustle of old Dhaka

the south, blending with the surrounding through wooded areas and water bodies, and one of the widest road running parallel to it, it still lacks that ceremonial approach we see with most such buildings worldwide. Jinjira across the River Buriganga on the south of Dhaka, made infamous by the cursed palace that we wrote about before, was once considered as the site for the Parliament. Many cities of the world developed equally on either side of a river; Budapest is actually two cities named Buda and Pest on two opposite banks of Danube. London, Paris or Moscow grew around rivers Thames, Seine or Volga. But despite the fact that Jinjira is just across the river from Dhaka city, it did not develop much and was not integrated with the main city. The Snell's Committee report in 1968 emphatically advocated its integration into the city, but nothing happened.

Jinjira was to be connected to the English Road/Nawab Yusuf Road through a bridge near the Ahsan Manjil, creating a tree-lined boulevard axis that could have changed the old city. In fact the same axis (North-South) would have been extended through the Paltan and Shantinagar to become a major attraction of the city. Another east-west axis could have been created connecting the Bahadur Shah Park, which in deed would have been along the oldest known pre-Mughal city path. Alas, vested quarters with petty interests stopped much of it, and the chance to connect the old and the new city with the south of the river through the historic quarters. Except for the Dholai Khal road built in phases, we have made successful incursion only twice the North South Road built during the second half of the 1980s and Dayaganj-Gandaria Road early this decade, right through the middle of old Dhaka. Both their positive and negative impacts on the life and economy, society and spaces of the indigenous city have yet to be studied.

The Jinjira axis, the North-South Road and Nawab Yusuf Road were supposed to meet at Nayabazaar an area familiar to almost all the architects because it had a large market of various papers and boards and a junkyard where architecture students found various materials that could be used to prepare models. However, I find many current specially private university students oblivious of such treasure trove at Nayabazaar.

(Read next week the last part of this article )