It´s a pleasure to welcome Professor Ashiq Ur Rahman of Khulna University, Bangladesh, and former Guest Professor at our Department, for the second IUSD Lecture of this summer term: “Housing the Urban Poor in Bangladesh: A Critical Perspective on Neoliberal Policies”.
In Bangladesh, like other developing countries, we – urban practitioners, policy makers, bureaucrats, academics – are often talking about the housing crisis, specially the crisis of the urban poor. In most of the cases, this crisis is labelled as a matter of scarcity of urban land. But, different literature provides provocative thoughts in this regard, asking whether the scarcity is natural or an outcome of politically motivated economic policies of cities in a globalised world. The landmark literature ‘Housing: Enabling Markets to Work’ supports this provocation. Professor Rahman´s prior research showed that the national development policies of Bangladesh are grounded in neo-liberal development principles and failed to ensure balanced developments both in urban and rural areas, resulting in an urbanisation of poverty. In addition, the policies and organisational arrangements related to housing are following the market enabling mechanism and failed to deliver any comprehensive programme for housing the urban poor. This lecture will highlight these policy principles related to housing the urban poor in Bangladesh. Finally, this lecture will summarise the case study scenario and will try to create a ‘room for manoeuvre’ to promote ‘community-led housing’ approach as an alternative mean for housing the urban poor in the neo-liberal policy context of Bangladesh.
Aerial view of Dhaka, Bangladesh (Ashiq Ur Rahman, March 2020)
Date and Time
Monday, 17th May 2021
11.30 – 13.00 Hours CET
Please join the lecture via Webex
https://unistuttgart.webex.com/unistuttgart-en/j.php?MTID=m528e7bfd8fdeea9f5100c649d820c524
WebEx ID: 121 763 3119
WebEx Password: IUSD2021
