REVIEWS

Korail Stories

— Nowshin Matin

Before differences in opinion become discords, can they be embraced?

Cities draw their vibrancy from the communities who live in them.  A city is animated by people and their activities, giving birth to traditions and practices that are specific to context and community. These aspects form the identity of a city. However, Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, is drifting further from the people who call this place home–slowly, it is losing its identity. Narratives woven within the local communities are silenced in the name of “development.” The developments are often centred upon how to best capitalize a space, rather than being respectful of the surrounding communities. Capital driven urban development practices can contribute to  widening the disparity between the powerful and the vulnerable. An example of such disparity is the case of the impoverished community of Korail, and its affluent neighbourhood, Gulshan.

Korail is a self-organized informal settlement inhabited by migrants from all over the country. It has existed for decades, but still lacks any formal servicing or resources. As more people migrate to Dhaka in search of better livelihoods, Korail becomes increasingly overcrowded.[1] Conflicting ownerships and political influences in the area further complicate the situation.[2] The unplanned sprawl across the lake has long been considered a blight by the neighbouring community, Gulshan. Ironically, Gulshan is dependent on the residents of Korail to fill positions for essential services such as housekeeping and chauffeuring. During the coronavirus pandemic, many Korail residents lost these jobs. Losing their only source of income, the people had fallen into desperation. The aids received from government barely kept them afloat. They were deprived of the most basic necessity—food. Sokhina Khatun, a resident of Korail, shares that, “Rich people waste food but don't share it with poor people like us. During COVID they don’t even remember us.”[3] Sokhina’s words provide a glimpse into the frustration felt by the community. Food security had become a critical issue, forcing the residents to find an alternative food source. 

Some families started using urban land at the edge of the lake for farming fruits and vegetables. Through discussions, the land was divided among lakeside residents to be exclusively used for farming. The farmers grow a variety of leafy and root vegetable. Various seasonal fruits are farmed as well. This land was created by RAJUK, a city development authority, by filling up part of the lake as an initiative to develop the lakeside for extending roads. RAJUK then abandoned the project when the pandemic began in early 2020.

In the past two years, the land has been used for urban farming, becoming a lung for the residents of Korail and mitigating some of the community’s frustration resulting from the pandemic. The families used the produce grown on the site and distributed any surplus by sharing it with the community or selling it. The residents had designed an organic pattern of resiliency through the urban farms. The land had morphed into the community identity. However, as pandemic cases started to decline, the city authorities wanted to assign a new program for the land.

The original road extension project was no longer in place. Instead, the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) initiated a clean-up to transform the space. This initiative was partly at behest of the Gulshan community who claimed that the lakeside was polluted. The DNCC considered future monetization of the land, and the plan was to commercialize the lakeside for a speed-boating business. In response, the Korail community protested in earnest, halting the process, but the protest could not put it to rest. The Gulshan residents, in their initial expression about lakeside pollution, claimed that they felt unsafe with the Korail people within close proximity. This had led city authorities to ban Korail locals from using the lake for transport. Without the community protests, the lakeside development would simply be another case, so common across Dhaka, of the silencing of vulnerable voices.

Insensitive clean-ups for redevelopment and the monetization the land have become the common method of so called “designing” spaces across the capital. Yet such design practices lack the consideration for social context. The design of land redevelopment tends to be conceived without respect for the identity of communities. The design is an obtrusion. It fails to address the issues that concern the stakeholders of a given space to embrace different perspectives from the community. As a result such design fails to represent the struggles and aspirations that surrounding communities identify with.

Different communities that had previously coexisted together are slowly losing the ability to co-exist on a middle ground; losing the ability to conceptualize spaces that help bridge the gap between the powerful and vulnerable who often live side-by-side. As communities take the first steps towards acknowledging this truth, the question remains: How might a space that encourages the exchange of power and vulnerability be designed? As society becomes increasingly polarized, might the design of spaces embrace differences and transform them?

An ongoing project being developed in Korail, the Play Space at Ershad Mat, is exploring these questions.[4] The proposed site is an existing playground that is “occupied” by a group of local leaders who do not own the land but control it using their political influence. Predominantly, the playground is used by boys and men who pay money for using the space to play. The concept of monetizing public space has not escaped the playground in Korail; the area is subsidized with rent paid by various vendors on the playground’s edges.

A local architecture firm, Paraa, has been working with the Korail community to explore the potential of a playground as a “middle ground”. Their design process engages local stakeholders with workshops to learn from leaders, residents and future playground users. Engaging users at the inception of a design makes it harder to avoid divided opinions. As conflicts emerge, due to difference of demographics and gender, the process works through consultation. At the end of the day, this process is an attempt to eliminate cultures of silence resulting from years of discrimination and the extinguishing of different perspectives. 

Can attention to different perspectives by rigorously encouraging participation build great community? The Korail community and Paraa could serve as an example for resolving the conflict experienced within the Gulshan neighbourhood.

References:

[1] Hasan, Rashidul and Mollah, Shaheen. The Daily Star. www.thedailystar.net.July 10, 2017. https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/dhaka-korail-slum-goons-eating-public-resources-1430713.

[2] Ullah, AKM Ahsan. Bright City Lights and Slums of Dhaka City. 1, London : Transnational Press London, 2004, Vol. 1.

[3] Prince, Zaqaria. Paraa. paara.co.uk. April 29, 2021. https://paraa.org.uk/2021/04/korail-bangladesh-the-potential-of-urban-agriculture-as-a-survival-tool-for-informal-communities/.

[4] Matin, Nowshin. Paraa. paara.co.uk. November 10, 2021. https://paraa.org.uk/2021/11/project-launch-korailplay-in-partnership-with-goethe-institut-bangladesh/

Nowshin Matin is informed by growing up by a river and the human relationship with the natural and built environment. Her research is focused on communities and the social relationship people experience with the natural environment. Most recently, she is an intern architect at Paraa and on the project team for the playspace project in Ershad mat. Nowshin participated in the 2021 WriteON workshop series, Amend.

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