Rethinking streets as a potential urban scope: a case of densely packed neighbourhoods of Dhaka city

Abstract

From the beginning of civilization, streets have been the interstitial spaces of cities and one of the predominant components of a community. In contemporary cities, streets have been transformed into typical thoroughfares though they represent the essence of their communities and generate intricate networks. Moreover, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasise building resilient and sustainable cities that ensure universal accessibility, safety, and adaptability. The primary objectives of this paper are to reevaluate streets as social hubs building trust among neighbours creating opportunities and analysing the scopes to incorporate them into the community development process as a gateway to initiate social interaction and participation in terms of establishing inclusive communities with liveable streets. As a reference, the Mirpur area, one of the densely populated areas of Dhaka city, is taken as a representation to address the problem and the research has been carried out with the assistance of Google Earth, field surveys, previous research works, interviews with community members and aimed to uphold the contribution of well-designed streets that can give authority to a community from all perspectives. However, the study substantiates the impact of streets on the social, economic life of the inhabitants and depicts how the streets hold the essence of dwellers and encourage participation through potential influence. According to the collected data nd their analyses, it demonstrates that more than 50% of the inhabitants regardless gender gather spontaneously on the streets everyday for different purposes, which make streets a potential social and economic hub as well as a successful urban space with a lot of opportunities to upgrade urban life for the residents as a whole.