A Social Vision for Dhaka’s Housing
The promise of shelter is broken in plain sight
20 June 2025, 18:00 PM
Writing the Padma
The first experience of the great river Padma is nothing less than overwhelming, and slightly terrifying. I first came to face the mighty river as a young lad in my teens sometime in April of the momentous year of 1971. My first sighting came with two terrors. My father was fleeing Dhaka with the family with the hope of crossing the river to escape the brutal onslaught of the Pakistan army. Arriving at the banks, there was the Padda (Padma) before us with its glorious panorama. It seemed like an oceanic river, with no sight of the other side, and the frightening prospect of crossing it.
1 June 2025, 18:00 PM
Ecological thinking in Prof Razzaq’s ‘State of the Nation’
Since the 1960s, Prof Abdur Razzaq wielded considerable influence on the academic and literati circle of his time,.
23 February 2025, 02:10 AM
Dhaka is an island
Claiming that Dhaka is an island is an earnest call for an ecological and nature-oriented restoration of the city, and to experience.
22 December 2024, 07:00 AM
The biggest wetland in Dhaka nobody knows about
Before the construction of the beribadh in the early 1990s, the nameless water body was part of the overflow zone of the Turag River.
22 September 2024, 01:30 AM
Dhaka, an inequal city
It is no wonder that a vast population of Dhaka are generally disgruntled with where they are.
2 September 2024, 04:00 AM
Death of an architecture
Mir Mosharraf Hossain Hall should be retained and restored.
30 March 2024, 04:00 AM
The future of the city, the city of the future
The city is perhaps the greatest innovation carried out by humans. Although nature has been used as an analogy in conceiving the fabric of the city, there is no such thing as the “city” in nature.
19 February 2024, 18:00 PM
Naked cities
During a run for essentials, I ran into a graffiti on a wall at a Philadelphia exit ramp: “Civilisation is pandemic.” On any other day, I would not even think twice about such a street-smart philosophical pronouncement.
27 October 2020, 18:00 PM
We Are the City
I dream of a city where turning the corner of an alley, in front of a shop of curios and old books, I decide what I want to do for the rest of my life.
15 February 2020, 18:00 PM
A Fire Next Door
Before the amber of the last one turn to ashes and forgotten memories, a new flame leaps up in another neighbourhood of the city, revealing, once again, cracks in the façade of our tilottoma.
2 April 2019, 18:00 PM
An Urbanism for Dhaka
A city is not mere buildings, streets and spaces; it is a theatre of social actions. And it is in that theatre, according to the American urbanist Lewis Mumford, that “man's more purposive activities…work out, through conflicting cooperative
9 February 2019, 18:00 PM
Yes, thinking about mud
Mud is the bane of the Bengali middle-class. Yet, mud is all over the place. Mud—that gooey, gluey, brown muck—lies waiting in the dry dust and with a little sprinkling of water rises up in rebellion, and grabs the pumps, heels and sandals of the middle-class and makes them skid off balance.
11 January 2019, 18:00 PM
The city is a letter that arrives late
I have known for a long time that one does not go anywhere. It is the cities of the countries that come or do not come to you. Cities are fateful letters. They only arrive lost. They only arrive posthumously.”
31 December 2018, 18:00 PM
Reimagining the west bank of Dhaka
Despite the usual gloomy narratives, there are opportunities to transform Dhaka into a modern but ecologically attuned metropolis. The transformation can be carried out with our own resources, and our own imagination.
9 November 2018, 18:00 PM
Public space makes a city
Public spaces constitute the life-stream of a city, and these are in short supply in Dhaka.
28 October 2018, 18:00 PM
Revisioning Roads as a Civic Landscape
If after thousands of years of human civilisation, we crawl on our roads in our vehicles at 7km per hour and die untimely deaths just by walking, there is something wrong with the picture.
2 September 2018, 18:00 PM
Building the city building by building
All cities change, and better cities—those that are not at the lowest rung of “most liveable cities”—change through careful planning and crafting of its assets. Dhaka is changing through radical norms, in a fury of demolition and building.
28 August 2018, 18:00 PM
Imagining a future Bangladesh
Tomorrow's Bangladesh is already here. Achievements and progress in all fields—from manufacturing to cricket, and from architectural excellence to social indicators—open up new prospects and promises for Bangladesh. PricewaterhouseCoopers, in its global economic projection for 2050, estimates that Bangladesh can potentially become the world's 28th largest economy by 2030, surpassing countries like Australia, Spain, South Africa, and Malaysia in economic growth.
21 February 2018, 18:00 PM
Dhaka needs a hydraulic vision
Dhaka is a paradox. The more we build assuming we are “developing,” the more we dig ourselves into an urban mess: Transportation is a chaos. Travelling is a nightmare. Khals vanish, and roads turn to khals. Public space is non-existent. Housing is in disarray.
4 August 2017, 18:00 PM
Potemkin Road: The tale of the strange bonsai beautification
All of a sudden Dhaka's Airport Road is looking like a Potemkin Road. With an exhibition of “bonsai” trees, odd garden-like set-ups,
25 May 2017, 18:00 PM
New visions for the city
The future landscape of the country depends on what we make of Dhaka city. Any national plan will have to consider the urban scenario of the whole country, from the primary cities to the small towns, but particularly Dhaka city as it will continue to play a vital role in impacting places throughout the country.
22 February 2017, 18:00 PM
A song for a small town
The train arrives at the station, and where the platform begins, a white concrete plaque with dark letters in Bangla announces the name
15 January 2016, 18:00 PM