Can Dhaka’s spirit be reclaimed?

For years, I’ve watched two young boys hang out at a family-owned tea stall near my home. Their conversations evolved from debates about football and bikes to heavier topics like shoshon (exploitation) versus shashon (rule) during the curfew of July, questioning which path Hasina was following. This shift is a testament to how recent political upheavals have sparked a broader consciousness.
Although recent political shifts have sparked broader conversations, this deep-seated political apathy didn’t appear overnight. A decade of Hasina’s dysfunctional governance has stifled free speech, undermining citizens’ self-respect and identity. Even agencies like RAJUK, our capital development authority, have followed suit, treating citizens as afterthoughts in decisions about Dhaka’s future. The result? A city that feels chaotic and unrecognisable, alienating people from both their surroundings and formal institutions.
Yes, planning a city as complex as Dhaka is daunting. Yet RAJUK’s failures go beyond typical challenges like managing the past sins of previous planning initiatives. In fact, citizens view RAJUK as a “government arm for realtors” due to policies that often ignore public interest and favour commercial interests, particularly in housing and public space developments. For instance, projects like the Detailed Area Plan (DAP, 2022-35) and the Strategic Plan (SP, 2016-35) sometimes reclassify flood-prone areas as “residential zones” or “agricultural homestead” to benefit developers, favouring elites at the public’s expense. This governance model, entrenched in profit motives, has left Dhaka’s residents with little influence over their environment.
And Dhaka is not a blank canvas. DAP’s block housing proposals, lacking clarity on their impact on existing areas, feel dismissive to residents. As Dhaka’s urban neglect deepens, citizens’ rights—from voting to self-respect—gradually erode. Historically resilient, the population now seems resigned to autocratic rule. As the capital, Dhaka sets the national tone, and its culture of detachment risks spreading nationwide.
According to evolutionary psychology, communities that evolved around shared natural resources tend to foster cooperative behaviour, while those rooted in hunting or survival develop a more competitive nature. This cooperative spirit has deep roots in Dhaka’s indigenous moholla culture along the Buriganga River. Each moholla unfolds like a honeycomb, its spatial elements woven together to encourage different levels of engagement. It begins with the uthan—a private courtyard where families gather. This opens into the goli, a semi-private, visually connected lane that everyone from housewives to schoolchildren and office-goers passes through, sparking spontaneous exchanges and small conversations that sustain daily life. The goli leads to the morh, a gathering place with magnets like tea stalls, sweet shops, schools, or religious centres, each changing character throughout the day. Finally, the chowk, a public square, serves as the heart of commercial and social activity, a place where the moholla connects with the broader public domain.
This seamless flow of spaces—from private to public, uthan to chowk—created a dynamic community that held people together in daily rhythms of cooperation and shared identity. Even today, amid Dhaka’s sprawling urban landscape, we see glimpses of this culture in small gatherings, like two boys who meet by a familiar tea stall in a cozy goli. Yet such intimate spaces are rapidly disappearing, leaving isolated developments and impersonal streets that lack the communal warmth of Dhaka’s original neighbourhoods.
In contrast to its indigenous core, later-developed Dhaka reflects only economic status, a product of a colonised, profit-driven urban landscape. Yet, aspects of the moholla culture could still be revived by transforming “dead-end” streets, or mora-goli, and utilising abandoned spaces between buildings by adding vibrant, crowd-pulling features such as food carts, vegetable vendors, seating areas, or even play spaces. Eliminating surface parking in areas where it’s feasible could also open semi-private ground spaces for co-designed community activities. While already-developed areas like Mohammadpur, Mirpur, and Dhanmondi may not accommodate block-style developments, upcoming housing projects should clarify how the calculation of floor area ratios (FAR) will work, to enable courtyard-style or block developments. Defining clear boundaries between intimate neighbourhood spaces, semi-public areas, and larger community zones is essential to restoring Dhaka’s rich cultural way of living.
In a conference last year, a senior planner dismissed ideas like “guided traditional shophouses,” “pedestrian-friendly streets,” and “policies for street vendor management” as naive dreams for ever-changing Dhaka. Yet citizens like myself feel left out of the process entirely. Policy documents don’t mention civil society or citizen groups as policy instruments, ignoring their role in creating community networks. In a city of over 20 million, it may seem impractical to reach every resident. However, rather than pursuing a “gradual continuum of change,” planners should seek incremental change by “advocating the common good.” This approach could lay the groundwork for “participatory planning,” a key component of the ongoing discourse on distributive democracy. Critics argue that participatory planning can lead to individual interests overshadowing common goals. But in a city whose people feel ignored for years, there are still those who marched for liberation, who protect their neighbourhoods from robbers, and who want to belong.
Each year, Dhaka’s liveability ranking declines, putting it alongside war-torn cities—a sad reflection of the psychological toll this city has taken on its residents. For years, we’ve lived under an invisible siege, where our sense of self and place has been diminished by unchecked planning. August 5 marked a turning point, a day that reminded us of our right to hold leaders accountable and to demand a city that respects its people, supports communal bonds, and nurtures civic participation.
With new political shifts on the horizon, we have a chance to reclaim Dhaka—not as a fractured, profit-driven metropolis, but as a city that honours its heritage, resilience, and future aspirations. In the face of enormous challenges, such as traffic, waste management, and urban flooding, the core issue remains Dhaka’s disconnection from its people. Rebuilding this city will require collaboration across government bodies, civil society, and citizens. Only by fostering this lost sense of community and shared identity can Dhaka become a place where its citizens feel at home, heard, and valued.