'Unplanned urbanisation leads to inferior middle-income destination'

Hossain Zillur Rahman has said unplanned urbanisation will lead Bangladesh to an 'inferior middle-income destination'.

The former advisor to the last caretaker government made the remark at the launch of the Lahore-based Mahbub ul Haq Centre's report on Human Development South Asia 2014, titled ‘Urbanisation: Challenges and Opportunities’.

The launch was arranged by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development at the BRAC Centre Inn on Monday.

Rahman said, "We have been aspiring to become a middle-income country. But the broad scenario reveals we are approaching to the goal riding on some low-level indicators.

"One of them is unplanned urbanisation, another is civic life without dignity, and yet another is unliveable cities. So, we run the risk of heading towards an 'inferior middle-income destination'. This is not what we are longing for."

He also said Dhaka's unplanned, irregular and unclean urbanisation was being replicated in other Bangladesh cities.

“We are creating cities where economic prosperity is being created but human dignity is being gradually sacrificed. Poor people are rushing to the cities for higher incomes."

Despite earning more, urban poor were lagging behind the rural poor in terms of social indicators, he said.

"We are in the path of urbanisation in which opportunities are being created but the poor, including the middle class, are losing dignity."

He said better opportunities in cities hardly created good public representatives.

“In one of our studies, we have seen that urban ward councillors lack a clean image compared to their rural counterparts. Most of them have criminal backgrounds. But this should not be, as the most advanced section of the society live in the cities."

With urban lifestyle becoming universal, Rahman feels urban Bangladesh will be the future Bangladesh.

To avoid haphazard urbanisation, he stressed on urban activism and initiatives launched from a civic platform. He also emphasised the building of second-tier cities.

Prof Ishrat Islam of Urban and Regional Planning at BUET said urbanisation was taking place rapidly because of migration to cities from rural areas.

She said this population was employed in the informal sector that had to be taken into the urban planning – something South Asia seems to ignore.

The report highlights rapid unplanned, uneven urbanisation in South Asia caused by “natural increases in the urban population and rural-to-urban migration”.

Urbanisation seems to be the prime factor behind the economic growth and city areas account for three-fourths of the total growth.

But, the report says, fast urbanisation was also creating "wide disparities in access to key infrastructure and services like water, sanitation, adequate housing, public transport, health and education".

The slum population is the worst victim of such disparities, it observes.

Besides, hazardous levels of air and water pollution, poor solid waste management, and the inability of the cities to provide clean water and sanitation to its residents have raised doubts about the sustainability and liveability of South Asian cities, the report says.

It says the challenge before urban governance is to go beyond creating wealth for a small section of people. Urban governance has to work on "decentralisation of power and resources; mobilising revenues for financing urban infrastructure and municipal services; focusing on synergies between urban growth and informal employment; and improving the quality of the urban environment for the vast majority of the urban poor".

The report also highlights that good urban governance and management can be panacea for urban maladies and can unlock the cities' potentials in raising human development outcomes in South Asia.

Executive Director of BIGD Sultan Hafeez Rahman, former finance minister M Syeduzzaman and North South University's professor of Environmental Science and Management ATM Nurul Amin were present at the programme.