The void in between urban neighborhood: the urban context of Dhaka

Abstract

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and one of the most crowded cities on earth, is almost three times as dense as Manhattan. The city’s edge is constantly evolving to respond to the never-ending needs. In this thesis, I am interested in ap plying lessons from the old part of Dhaka to new developments amid urbanization by questioning the unrestrained commitment to western urban design principles in a city like Dhaka from South Asia. In this contemporary global context of constant ly changing technological, socio-economical, and political paradigms, traditional neighborhoods in different cities in South Asia are constantly creat ing room for change. However, the lacking sense of belonging and social integrity in contemporary city design makes the new neighborhoods vul nerable and isolated and this creates an invisible social void. Le Corbusier, one of the pioneers of modern city design, completely ignored the diver sity that must be kept in mind while designing a city in South Asia. When we follow Corbusian city planning, we mostly forget about the coexistence of diverse demographics in our traditional cities. Without these cultural spaces, the people living in the cities loses the sense of belonging. This the sis is about addressing those social and cultural voids in a city like Dhaka and bringing back the cultural dynamics in the urban design by building critical references from different traditional and new neighborhoods. In this thesis, I will consider Jane Jacobs’s theo ries in urban space and how her criticism of the failings of modernist planning theories in her book “The Death & Life of Great American Cities”. Then, I will define the notion of “Social Void” and why it is necessary to address it now. Through dif ferent case studies from the old Dhaka, I will first try to find all the traces of diverse coexisting de mographics. The analysis of the findings in those traditional spaces will include the story of its street, people, culture, sense of be longing, and socio-economic and political contexts. Secondly, I will study different neighborhoods of newly developed Dhaka and try to find out, how some of them lost their identity while following the western city design pattern and how some of those neighborhoods are constantly trying to get back to their organic growing pattern of the city. Last, I will investigate multiple cultural and social spaces in a neighborhood in the new Dhaka and propose where and how these cultural values should be integrated into the design of a city. These solutions can play a crucial role in designing a new kind of communal neighborhood space where its inhabitants will have the ability to grow and have strong social integrity. This thesis will create room to question Modern City Planning and how we as architects or urban designers should look at the development of a new city planning and its neighborhood in the context of the Global South.