Dhaka Housing Process

“Let’s Co Create Our Community (Doshe Mile Boshoti Gori) – Dhaka” Gabtoli Beribadh City Colony, Dhaka (2020) The process of co-creating our community (Doshe Mile Boshoti Gori- Dhaka) was initiated with collective housing, this process has been adapted for placemaking for a better living environment in the community. Housing is considered as one of the  fundamental human rights and housing does not mean only shelter, it is about having quality of living indoor and in the immediate surrounding. Bangladesh has been suffering from urban housing shortage on a large scale due to rapid urbanization. As a result of internal migration (due to climate change, economic centralisation etc), the capital city, Dhaka has become one of the most dense cities with 12 million people living in more than 4500 slums or informal settlements. In these low income areas, the unplanned sporadic housing comes along with poor, unsafe yet costly physical infrastructures as compared to other parts of the city. Such housing is an intricate part of the very sensitive social fabric of Dhaka, seeking careful direction to improvement. The key has to be enhancing the quality of life of the citizens of all strata and the overall city. “5 model cities- Dhaka”, supported by Selavip and ACHR (Asian Coalition for Housing Rights) has brought that opportunity for city’s low-income people to get together to work towards solving this housing issue. This project started amid the pick of COVID 19. The health of housing, people and neighborhood became the most critical question for the settlements where people live very densely and have limited means for isolation/ quarantine in case of contagious diseases. A core focus for this process has been ensuring ‘health’  through design in the densely populated low income settlements, along with the housing right perspective. A unique housing model is in the process of design, where a group of 28 families have bought their own land through saving and now designing their housing. And then there is, ‘Gabtoli Beribadh City Community’ where 13 families have come together through a savings group and implemented healthy and affordable house construction and upgradation in an extremely congested context. While the adults were working on housing, children came together in groups to have their own space which resulted in productive gardening, renovating a school, painting, planting and having fun all together. The community has been indulged in the spirit of co-creation not just to make healthy houses but also to create safe and healthy common spaces for everyone. About 15 years ago, due to the Hatirjheel Development Project, 472 families were relocated from Gulshan, Dhaka to Gabtoli City Colony. Gradually evicted from different parts of the city, today about 800 families are living here. Most of the resident’s hometowns are outside Dhaka city such as- Barishal, Rangpur, Comilla, Shariyatpur etc. Their families came to Dhaka in search of livelihood or due to natural calamities like river erosion. Colony residents are mainly employed as sweepers of the Dhaka City Corporation, but some are involved in small business, and some work as mechanics and day laborers. This colony is situated near the river Buriganga at 600 meters away from the Gabtoli bus terminal. In the beginning, this land was filled with garbage, did not have roads, water lines, and other necessary infrastructures. Roads, water lines, and toilets are being provided gradually with NGOs and the government’s help. There are a total of 15 lanes in the colony. Sixteen families are living on each side of the alley. There is a toilet and a water line at the end of the alley. 7-8 households use one washroom. At the other end of the alley is the market, which is run by the residents of this area. Here most of the houses have temporary structures, some of which are quite broken. Most of the houses are one story and the number of people living in each house is quite large. From all these houses 13 houses were chosen. These houses were chosen according to their needs and willingness to cooperate. This led them to form a saving group named “Shapla Boshoti Unnayan Shomiti”. This saving group helped them to stay connected together and to be included in the housing processes such as design workshops, community mapping, building their own houses etc. The collective effort has made it possible to become a bright spot, an inspiration for other such communities. The effort was an amalgamation of community members and community architects; the active participation of the people in the housing process, and the presence and technical guidance of the community architects have played vital roles throughout the process. This bright spot is the result of collaboration between many actors to address the need of low income communities in the urban context in Dhaka. There was a community group, a group of local architects, a local NGO, an expert architect group as advisors and the international fund provider. The major focus and strategies are-

• Creating visible examples/evidence of community-led actions by involving more and more communities through community profiling, small interventions and building housing with different and unique challenges.
• Strengthening the collective preparation of communities towards ‘low-income housing movement’ to be facilitated through the small steps. Small infrastructure development can have many beneficiaries and bring many communities together.
• Formation of partnership with community networks and organizations/ professional bodies for the legal and technical support to the communities for accessing lands and resisting eviction.
• Facilitating partnership between different government agencies and community networks.
• Training more young professionals who can continue the pro-people housing and placemaking approach in Dhaka city and beyond.

Outputs

• A citywide network involved in community organizing, strengthening, horizontal learning and sharing, developing savings mechanisms and community and city funds, preparing themselves for securing land and planning their housing or upgrading projects as well as better quality of lives – socially, environmentally and economically has been developed.
• A housing finance system, or a citywide housing fund, is set up, which provides a mechanism to finance the pilot housings and the projects that will follow.
• Two very different housing models have been developed. 13 healthy and sustainable houses built with the cooperation of the community people and architects in quite an adverse context. On the other hand, 28 families are in the process of designing their own housing to be built on their own land.
• Few small interventions to instigate larger collective action in the community have been conducted. In Gabtoli, development of school, a pedagogy system for the children who stopped going to school during the COVID period and children’ s food growing network in very land-limited settlements have developed. In another community in Dhaka, the Mohammadpur Chad Uddyan community, a common infrastructure-drain, was co-designed and built which brought the community together to work for their healthy neighborhood.
• Extensive documentation is done through reports, photographs and films for national and international dissemination to spread the good practices and inspire others.