A familiar scene repeats across Dhaka: standstill cars, motorcycles and bicycles crawling between them, crammed bus stops, broken footpaths, and barely a bench or public space for residents to linger. The irony: the city has given over 80% of its most precious street space to vehicles, which account for only 5% of total trips-a strategy that has gained almost nothing. Dhaka's motor vehicles grow 5 per cent annually, doubling from 2010 to 2023, as the city built flyovers, expressways, and parking while banning non-motorized options on main streets that still carry 58 per cent of trips, with no dedicated bus lanes despite buses carrying 28 per cent. The strategy failed: average speed fell from 25 to 4.8 km/hr, near walking speed. Spending on more car spaces was absorbed by more cars. Residents exposed to worsening health, shorter life spans, flooding, heatwaves from heat-island, intolerable noise (119 dB), hazardous air quality (300+ AQI), dust 12-18 times above WHO guidelines and diesel-soot. Result is "Dhaka" as one of the world's unhealthiest cities, with declining productivity from congestion costs of 6-10 per cent of GDP, social segregation, weakened local business, and lifeless neighbourhoods.
Drowning under asphalt and concrete, Dhaka's neighbourhood spaces remain ignored, though streets, alleyways, squares, and green spaces are where street food, culture, and civic identity emerge-hallmarks of civilization. Dhaka's parks and playgrounds cover only 2 per cent, with total green and open space below 5-8.5 per cent of urban land, just 0.486 instead of 9 square metres per resident as per WHO/UNEP benchmark or 25 per cent of urban land. They are fragmented and hard to reach. Many Asian cities instead adopt an "indoor privatized city" of shopping malls, enclosed complexes, and paid recreation. Pedestrians, hawkers, women, children, seniors, and low-income residents without cars or access to private space suffer this critical shortage most severely. Car occupies more space despite carrying fewer trips while residents have tiny space for minimum healthy life. This condition has created severe "spatial justice" inequality, and resentment among "have-nots" has intensified political division as climate change and resource constraints worsen.
Fortunately, this complex urban problem has a simple solution if planners scrutinize public spaces closely. Outdated "highway" standards, wrong assumptions and contextless policies have created widespread "invisible spaces" because they appear "necessary" and are everywhere. Wide lanes, large intersections, and driveways are sized for peak demand and highway speeds, though Dhaka's traffic speed rarely exceeds 30 km/h. Applying evidence-based "urban street" standards and principles of SDGs 3, 8, 11, and 12, research result shows 25-40%-sometimes over 60%-of vehicle-allocated space remain unused at any given moment. Bangladeshi cities have rarely measured this enormous waste, but anyone seeing a six-lane road or vast parking lot can sense the emptiness of usage.
Spatial equity is now central to city building, and leading progressive cities are reversing old trends as transportation decouples from economic growth. It recognizes that everyday interactions in public spaces shape urban belonging, social cohesion, health equity, manage business locally, and financially strong neighbourhood character. New multimodal planning, practices, creative design, and sensible policies is helping right-size streets and reclaim underused space-often at a fraction of vehicle-infrastructure cost-through five concepts demonstrated worldwide: 1) eco-mobility hubs integrating mobility, services, culture, and social life; 2) reclaiming invisible spaces allocated to vehicles but rarely used; 3) mobility parks converting excess space into green infrastructure such as green medians, boulevards and rain gardens; 4) human spaces for local gathering; and 5) flexible flow spaces repurposing lanes for walking, cycling, micromobility, and shared mobility - shifting streets from vehicle dominance to shared commons.
Cities must also explore a new economic model around neighbourhoods, the building blocks of urban life. Following the "planetary boundary" framework by IPCC scientists, Amsterdam is implementing "Doughnut Economics" toward degrowth policies. Building on "social business" and "circular economy" approaches, a "neighbourhood circular economy" concept was developed, enabling strong urban neighbourhoods without new land with lower budgets. It reframes road space as a recoverable public asset, not fixed infrastructure. By mapping oversized medians, half-empty curb lanes, and underused intersection corners street by street, these spaces can be reclaimed as quality public spaces, small green "mobility parks," and slimmer lanes prioritizing walking, cycling and shared transport. These spaces then generate local revenue rather than another municipal cost.
As a first step toward stronger local neighbourhood economy, we propose social enterprises managed by local business improvement governing body that reinvest almost all profit locally rather than siphoning wealth outward. Reclaimed street portions could host cooperatives selling local produce, convertible stalls for vendor in daytime and temporary accommodation at night, while unused medians and newly created spaces become public squares with pop-up vendors and night markets that locally owned rather than franchised.
Second, we propose a Neighbourhood Sustainable Economy Index (NSEI) weighing four dimensions rather than car throughput or GDP alone: environmental performance (SDGs 11, 12); economic vitality-local trade, repair and reuse, jobs (SDG 8); social infrastructure-public space per capita (SDG 11); and governance-transparency and safeguards against displacement (SDG 16). Using nine heterotopia examples including Montreal, Havana, Bogotá, and Bangkok, the approach works best where residents hold genuine control over public-space redesign and local governance of local economy, rather than weaker central governance or global syndicates driven by wealth-extraction objectives.
This approach is not against roads, cars, or growth. It argues for measuring before adding concrete, and asking what new asphalt means to residents before assuming unsustainable infrastructure should continue. For cash-strained Dhaka, facing energy transition, housing, and mobility crises, converting even small unused road space into small-retail corridors, cooperative markets, and green mobility parks would cost far less than more vehicle infrastructure, while giving small and social businesses somewhere to operate. Dhaka lacks neither space nor pledges, but imagination-and an index to see what it already has.
Dr. A S M Shakil Haider is an Assistant Professor of Economics at BRAC University. Additionally, he maintains an active research collaboration with Center for Energy and Logistics (CEL), BRAC University. [email protected]
Dewan Karim is sector lead of Multimodal Mobility & Safety at LEA Consulting Canada and co-founder of Centre for Urban Dialogue, a Canadian-based non-profit organization. He is the author of the Shifting Mobility book series and frequently appears as a keynote speaker in international audience.
