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Khulna’s Urban Poor and Their Living Environment: a Point to Ponder at the Beginning of Third Millennium

Qazi Azizul Mowla*
Architecture Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna-9208, Bangladesh.

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

The Paper attempts to find a relationship between the economic status of a people and the healthiness of their living environment. Khulna City’s urban poor is taken here as the case study for analysis. It is found that once trapped in poverty condition, it is very difficult for the poor to come out of it, and consequences are illiteracy, poor health and poor living environment and vise versa. This urban blight and poor urban environment contaminate the whole city. It is also found that indigenous social structure resists poverty conditions and that planning authorities should include the urban poor in their planning framework for a sustainable urban living environment.

Keywords: Urban poor; Environment; Poverty; House; Settlement

Location: Khulna, Bangladesh

Start Date:

End Date:

Program Area: Socio-economic and Policy

Non-commodity: Socio-economic status

Objectives:

Methodology:

Why Poverty? NIUA (1988) posed some basic questions regarding the poverty, such as, is poverty a consequence of physical and ecological conditions of living in a particular setting or is it a socio-economic and political phenomenon? The main thrust of physical ecologist in explaining poverty is on demonstrating the interaction between population growth and pressure on resources and the environment. Uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources and population growth disturb the environmental equilibrium and create conditions in which human wants cannot be satisfied, thus leading to the emergence of poverty in the long run. Mostly poverty is created in the rural areas due to the limited opportunity of jobs, causing migration in search of livelihood. At local level, each human settlement can ecologically sustain only a certain level of population beyond which, accommodation of slums creates major distortion in the society.

Poverty is also sometimes termed as a product of tradition, because it is generally seen that even though there is an increase in the real income of the poor, they continue to live in poverty-stricken conditions. It is observed in Bangladesh that the economic advantage of birth exceeds the economic advantage of education by a far larger margin. It may be due to their lack of orientation to set priorities or their living habits and thus wasteful expenditure etc. Islam (1994, p. 112) identified some of the factors that explain both urban and rural (more rural) poverty in Bangladesh,

Khulna’s Urban Poor and Their Living Environment Brief Overview: A recent survey (Choudhury 1999) reveals that 28% of Khulna’s household live below poverty line. A Asian Development Bank report, quoted in Saha (1991) shows that Khulna City Corporation area accommodates a slum population of 54,000 occupying an area of 88 acres. They are distributed in 54 bustees. To assess the environmental conditions in the slum of Khulna city, several bustees were surveyed. The slums/bustees are Sonadanga bustee in ward 17, Tootpara bustee in ward 18, Alam Nagar Bustee in ward 13, Rupsa bustee in ward 22 and No. 5 Terminal Ghat bustee in ward 21. It has been observed that the Environmental Awareness level among the urban poor depend on income level, type and level of education; availability of necessary physical infrastructure facility etc. Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) with the assistance of UNICEF undertook a SIP to improve the living condition of the slums located in 20 Municipalities of the country including that of Khulna. Under SIP, Khulna City Corporation (KCC) selected Sonadanga and Rupsa bustees. Though the project is long over, it could not create a desired impact on slum environment. It is because the approach was fragmented in nature and the improvement was not directed towards the root causes of the problem.

Magnititude of the Problem: The high degree of over-crowding and lack of basic sanitary conditions in slum areas have been the finding of all the surveys conducted. In 1998 open space for 850 thousand population was only 63 acres or 0.07 acre open space per 1000 person. In the Khulna Master Plan of 1961, recommended open space per 1000 person was 4acres (Choudhury, 1999). Situation is naturally worse in the bustee areas. Overcrowding exists not only at the slum settlement level but also in dwelling units. The average size of the urban household in 1995/97 was 5.6 and the number of person per dwelling was 5.75. The Average area per person of a household in urban areas is 6.89 sq.m. as compared with 7.8 sq.m. in the rural areas. More than 50% of the household live in one room dwelling unit. The average income per household is Tk. 1500/- per month in 1997. About 31.11% Urban poor have a family income of less than Tk. 1500/- per month. Choudhury (1999) indicates that 12% of the Khulna’s population are absolutely unemployed, 1.5% self-employed and there is 2% child labour in the market. The average rent paid per household in the bustees is Tk. 200/- and 48% of the household are paying rents to mastans/musclemen or the landlords. Landlords do majority of eviction (57%) and the rest 22% is done by the mastans. Most of the dwellers do not feel secure, 30% mentioned the security conditions as poor. From the surveys it seems that the main environmental problem in the Khulna’s urban slums is sanitation problem. Disease spread very fast due to filthy and unhygienic living conditions. Most of the urban slums have no sanitary latrine. The latrine that some slums have doesn’t always provide adequate privacy. Another issue that came out of the study is that there are serious complaints regarding slums as being the hotbeds of sordid activities, according to many, breed crimes and offer sanctuary to criminals. The facts and figures that came out of the survey regarding the built environment are summarized.

Source of Information: Khulna University Studies, Vol. 1, Issue 2,December 199, pp. 212

Article Link (Online Journal):

Funding Source:

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Achievement/Findings:

New Urbanists are highly critical of present fragmentation of our society and breaking of bonds of community. They emphasise that the ‘networks’ are no substitute for true community and also are of the view that the urban paradigm, which has dominated since post-war time (in western countries), can not sustain another generation of growth. Kunstler (1994) holds responsible for the entire problem in the urban environment to the auto and petroleum interests, the greed of developers, ignorance to urban poor and the short sightedness of civic officials. In Khulna a huge amount of housing stock is unauthorized by current planning standards, which indicates irrelevance of building and planning by laws to the local Centex and also the inefficiency of the planning body KDA (Mowla, 1990, p. 46)5 . As the formal public and private sector service agencies are unable to meet most of the urban services needs there is a strong case for them to support the initiatives and develop the resources of community based organizations or initiatives. It is also clear that alternatives to the government have to be sought to tackle the bustee problem. State or the professionals may assume the role of facilitators and people’s own initiatives be encouraged. It must be emphasized that in the bustees’ supports, such as affordable land, infrastructural services, legal profession and design expertise are absolutely essential. In a nutcover, it may be said that the urban poor with their poverty must be accepted as a fact and therefore included in the planning framework for Khulna City. Physical Development also needs to follow ‘bottom up’ policy and includes social agendas, therefore, recognizing and mitigating the needs of the urban poor. Once the living environment of the urban poor is improved, the total urban environment will naturally undergo a healthy change.

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