OP-ED: As the city grows – Dhaka Tribune

What do cities reveal about the human condition?

In Social Justice and the City, David Harvey states that cities are, foremost, a result of the human desire to remake the world we live in and in building cities we have remade ourselves.

Hence, the question centring cities also revolves around us.

Since 1950, the number of people living in cities has quintupled. In the world, we already have more than 3.5 billion city dwellers and this number is going to surpass six billion in the next 30 years. This is not just statistics; the change also entails fundamental transformations of the human condition -- the ways we live and the ways our lives are structured.

A class phenomenon

Considering the concomitant expansion of cities with capitalism, it is no exaggeration to refer to cities as a class phenomenon of sorts. For instance, a declaration of a public holiday was announced in Bangladesh on March 26 to reduce the risks of spreading Covid-19; however, we have witnessed some extraordinary scenes of people leaving the capital.

People leaving Dhaka in cramped modes of mass transport echo the sentiment that the city is not theirs. One may argue that they were unaware of the risks of mass travel or did not trust the authorities about the threats of Covid-19 but the rush of people -- the working-class -- out of the city showed that Dhaka is not inclusive.

They understood that daily necessities would not be available during lockdown or that they would experience syndicated price hikes.

An additional factor that instigated mass travel to villages is the idea of the home vis--vis the city. Most working-class people living in Dhaka consider their status to be transitory.

Either they want to return to the home-village after overcoming the socio-economic crisis that forced them to migrate in the first place or establish themselves in Dhaka so that they can build a home in the city.

It is not just about finding a job and renting a place -- rather, what makes the transitory phase for the working-class longer is the difficulty of gaining enough means to support family members in Dhaka. Thus, their home remains in the villages.

Imagined fortunes

Dhaka usually appears in the imagination of the villagers as a place where they can make their fortune. However, Dhaka became the centre of the crisis during the Covid-19 pandemic which forced a certain class of people to leave.

However, it is usually believed that people living on the margins of society suffer from chronic crisis, making the difference between crisis and normalcy almost insignificant. Essentially, factors of long-term crises such as violence and poverty become embedded in the social fabric.

Even though the urban poor live in precarious conditions, they do not expect normalcy any time soon. But the pandemic produced additional burdens, such as the sudden loss of income and thus, influencing their return to the villages.

Covid-19 did not cause unprecedented human suffering if we consider the nature of the crisis and disregard its scale. Despite widespread luxuries, cities are places where we face the greatest catastrophes.

Globally, even though governments insist on eliminating social division, injustice, and inequality, what we aim to eliminate becomes strikingly visible through human tragedies such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London and the 2019 Chawkbazar fire tragedy in Dhaka.

Urban growth and the human cost

Unchecked urban growth is responsible for inadequate infrastructure. While our economy becomes concentrated in cities, villages lack effective demand creation -- the vicious cycle continues to grow, pushing more and more people to the cities.

This massive migration is poised for exploitation and surplus extraction. Eventually, urban growth negatively affects human lives, diminishing safety and the quality of life.

One extreme outcome of this process was the Rana Plaza collapse that killed more than 1,100 garment factory workers. Back in 2013, many factory managers allegedly forced workers to continue production under unsafe conditions with threats of sacking and withholding salary.

This kind of human tragedy is common. Workers are forced to work in perilous conditions so that cities can sustain their glamour.

An altered socio-political landscape

Urbanization alters the political landscape. The middle-class who have become property owners are more concerned with protecting their property and individualized identities. The working-class, on the other hand, lack a sense of belonging. This creates the possibility for a political struggle.

City dwellers, in the race to an imagined fortune, choose a lifestyle of work-eat-sleep-repeat which contributes to feelings of alienation. And rapid urbanization shrinks walkable spaces, playgrounds, and neighbourhoods, making it difficult to foster a sense of community.

Cities succeed in absorbing the surplus population who do not have access to means of production but at the cost of deepening social inequality. In cities, while certain segments of population are continuously benefitted, others are denied access to the new prosperity.

We see the mushrooming of gated communities, five-star hotels, shopping malls, and restaurants. These illusions have been created by the privileged classes for themselves, but theres no denying the injustice that continues to exist.

Fluidity of cities

The human condition in cities shows a need to reconceptualize the idea of the city. It must be fluid in nature in order to accommodate those who reside temporarily within its borders.

Dhaka grows on the backs of people who find it difficult to become a part of it, revealed by the growing squatters, rates of unemployment, and sustained income inequality. Within the circuits of production and accumulation, capital shapes the spaces and relationships in cities.

However, the mass movement out of the city when it was shutdown reflects how the capitalist hegemony failed to dictate or obfuscate peoples relationships.

According to Patrick Geddes, a city is more than a place in space. It is a drama in time. Still relevant as cities now host some of humanitys greatest challenges.

We must not only work towards a fair distribution of what already exists but transform the nature of the city for the better.

Mohammad Tareq Hasan is an anthropologist and teaches at the University of Dhaka. This piece is written for the series: Contemporary City Dynamics.

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OP-ED: As the city grows - Dhaka Tribune