October 28, 2020
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.
February 16, 2020
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.
April 3, 2019
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.
February 10, 2019
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
January 12, 2019
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.
January 1, 2019
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.”
November 10, 2018
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.
October 29, 2018
Public space makes a city
Public spaces constitute the life-stream of a city, and these are in short supply in Dhaka.
September 3, 2018
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.
August 29, 2018
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.