Politics of Development Driven Displacement in Cities of the Global South : A Study on Dhaka, Beijing, Karachi, and New Delhi.

A Collaborative Project of the School of Cities’ Student Academy: Global Urbanism

Amelia Ellis (Bachelor’s in Urban Studies & French) Zixian Liu (PhD in History) Nushrat Jahan – (PhD in Planning) Purbita Sengupta – (PhD in Political Science) Sabahat Zehra – (Master's in Art History)

© 2019. Amelia Ellis, Zixian Liu, Nushrat Jahan, Purbita Sengupta, and Sabahat Zehra Introduction In the quest of a model city: Why do the state keep repeating failed programs for a slum free city in Dhaka, Bangladesh?

Nushrat Jahan • Housing is a key human right according to article 25 of Universal declaration of Human Rights. • Slum dwellers right to housing is not ensured in Megacities like Dhaka

• What motivates continued eviction and slum resettlement programs (SRP) in Dhaka？How dispossession and slum interventions are related? What type of narratives contribute to the ongoing Setting the objective dispossession of slum dwellers and changes are taking place? Programs and Interventions in Slums

• Eviction (Since 1975 to 2019, more 135 eviction drives have displaced 200000 people ) • Slum improvement programs (SIPs) (early 1980s till early 1990s, total 18 SIPs run by the City, Unicef, ADB, and World Bank ) • Slum resettlement and rehabilitation (4 projects since 1975, latest in 1998 – the Bhashantek rehabilitation project , 15000 units for low income and poor people, none of the projects completed) • Proposed new development 2020 (15000 units for low income people , each unit costing a minimum of 4 million in Bangladeshi Taka ) The Crisis Paradigm of Slum Intervention and Dispossession

• Slums are viewed as a serious threat to public health and law and order of the ideal city, and eviction drives are frequently performed by state agencies to remove illegal occupants from public and private land. • Using demolition as a tool for state policy to evade compensation Has been described as ‘accumulation by dispossession (ABD)”. ABD accounts for accumulation through coercion such as “eminent domain, slum demolition, land grabbing” Paradigm shift - Protection of Human Rights of Slum Dwellers

• In recent years, there has been a turn from the crisis paradigm of slum areas to human rights of slum dwellers, as a result of activist organizations and few NGOs like ASK, DSK, and BRAC. • Activist groups are seeking intervention of the judiciary to stop eviction drives and the judiciary is playing playing a contradictory roles. • The High Court Division of Bangladesh have made multiple pronouncement to include right to housing as a human right and directed the government to protect the rights of the poor Concluding Remark

• The high level of land scarcity in the capital and consequent high price creates an opportunity to speculate and accumulate by taking control over land in the urban core. • This is a contributing cause of repeated attempts at failed or marginally successful slum relocation and rehabilitation programs. • A qualitative change of narrative of how slums are imagined and constructed in the policy sphere is taking place through activist and judiciary intervention. • Major reform of city governance and regulatory policies, ideological framing of the urban poor, and restructuring of urban land management regulations The Beijing Purge, Rural Land Marketization, and the Neoliberalizing Developmental State

Zixian Liu Beijing Purge Campaign

• “Low-End Population” • Cleansing Urban Slums

Distinctive Land Tenure System

• State-owned urban land co-existing with rural land collectively- owned by villagers • “urban village” The Experiment of the Marketization of the Collectively- Owned Rural Commercial Land • Ms. Thacther’s belief: You will always spend the pound in your pocket better than the state will. • The United Kingdom and the United States in the 70s-80s: the fading of the state • China: the neoliberalization of a developmental state The use of spectacular structures and high-rise buildings have been a global strategy in order to place a city into the larger global moment of modernity. Bahria Town uses similar markers of modernity to claim its position within global cultures.

Sabahat Zehra

Image Courtesy: Dawn.com Karachi Class- ified Privatization A Development that Looks the Same Turning Indian Cities into Global Cities: An examination of India’s in-situ slum redevelopment policy and its incorporation into Delhi’s master plan

- Purbita Sengupta QUESTIONS?

Amelia Ellis, Zixian Liu, Nushrat Jahan, Purbita Sengupta, and Sabahat Zehra (2019). Politics of Displacement in Global South Cities: A Study on Dhaka, Beijing, Karachi, and New Delhi. A research project. Toronto: CA. School of Cities, University of Toronto