To build like Shanghai, start with Dhaka's east

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently ranked Dhaka 171st among 173 cities in its 2026 Global Liveability Index, only ahead of the Libyan capital Tripoli and Damascus in Syria. Dhaka scored 42 out of 100 overall and just 27 for infrastructure—its weakest category by some distance. But no one needs an index to tell us what’s wrong with Dhaka. We live it every day, and Dhaka’s unliveability is simply undeniable.

Against this grim backdrop, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) is reportedly preparing a Dhaka Urban Regeneration Project based on block-level redevelopment: combining small plots, constructing multistorey buildings, returning floor space to landowners, and using the released land for wider roads, parks, playgrounds, and water bodies. The term frequently used in this context is Shanghai Model, picked up right after the prime minister’s state visit to China.

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But the Shanghai Model succeeded not because Shanghai built taller towers or cleared old neighbourhoods more aggressively than other cities. It succeeded because, over several decades, the city aligned land, infrastructure, public transport, economic policy, and municipal authority based on a coherent urban planning strategy.

Shanghai has long contained several overlapping urban forms: the old Chinese city, colonial districts, industrial districts, and later socialist housing compounds. The scale of the challenge to modernise Shanghai was formidable. In 1991, roads occupied only about 5 percent of Shanghai’s land surface. Five separate bodies were responsible for transport, while the city’s permanent transport planning institute had only recently been established.

Shanghai’s strategy combined physical investment with institutional reform. The municipal government strengthened transport planning, reformed utilities, improved infrastructure financing, and linked individual projects to a broader economic programme. Roads, bridges, metro lines, drainage, and wastewater systems were not treated as separate entities but built as components of an urban economy. The Pudong area became the most visible expression of this strategy. In 1990, China’s State Council approved the development of the largely rural and industrial eastern bank of the Huangpu River as a new financial, commercial, and technological centre. The city established specialised zones, supplied infrastructure, and used land development to attract domestic and international capital.

But Pudong was only one part of Shanghai’s transformation. The city also redeveloped obsolete industrial land, expanded public transport, moved economic activity beyond the historic core, and eventually adopted a polycentric metropolitan structure connecting central Shanghai with new cities and the wider Yangtze River delta. In more recent times, Shanghai has begun correcting some of the environmental damage caused during its industrial expansion. By the end of 2025, it reported about 1,100 parks and 1,040 km of new greenways, resulting in 9.5 square metres of park space per resident.

Shanghai’s greatest advantage was that a municipal government was able to coordinate land, transport, finance, and services.

Dhaka has an abundance of agencies but no effective metropolitan authority to coordinate them all. Rajuk plans land use and issues development permits. The two city corporations manage many local services. Dhaka Wasa handles water and parts of drainage. Dhaka Metropolitan Police controls traffic. Dhaka Transport Coordination Authority remains an agency few other agencies listen to. The list goes on. These institutions report through different chains of command and frequently pursue projects which are incompatible with their abilities. This is an obstacle no imported model can work around. A well-rendered master plan will fail if one agency approves construction on a flood retention area, another later cuts through the road to install drains, and a third lacks the power or funding to maintain the canal.

Comparing Shanghai with Dhaka, the parallel between the two cities is strongest not in Old Dhaka—where Rajuk aims to start its project—but in the east. In 2018, a World Bank study identified more than 100 sq km of land in eastern Dhaka, close to the existing urban core, as an opportunity comparable to Pudong. It warned, however, that spontaneous development could make the area as congested and environmentally damaged as the west before the necessary infrastructure was installed. The report proposed three linked interventions: an eastern embankment along Balu River with restored canals; mass transit and road connections; and a major business district capable of drawing jobs and residents away from the overcrowded centre. It estimated that an investment of about $15 billion could generate an additional $53 billion in annual economic output by 2035, accommodate five million more residents, and add 1.8 million jobs. These were projections, not guarantees. But they showed the potential value of planning infrastructure before uncontrolled construction takes over.

Rajuk’s proposed Old Dhaka project is admirable. But Old Dhaka is a dense social and economic organism containing homeowners, tenants, traders, craftspeople, warehouse workers, street vendors, religious institutions, and family businesses. Returning floor space to registered landowners does nothing by itself for renters, informal occupants, or the workers whose livelihoods depend on being close to particular markets.

The reality is that Bangladesh lacks China’s control over urban land, finance, and relocation. Ownership in Old Dhaka may be divided among numerous heirs, complicated by informal transactions, or tied up in litigation. A project cannot simply exchange old land for new flats as though every resident were an undisputed owner with the same interests. Old Dhaka is also historically important; a carpet urban regeneration project without expert consultation on heritage conservation should ring alarm bells. Perhaps a separate Old Dhaka authority, a dedicated body with its own legal mandate over planning, conservation, and execution inside that one historic district, would be a better, safer approach—much like the Walled City of Lahore Authority in Pakistan.

An urban regeneration strategy should therefore ideally begin with East Dhaka’s floodplain, transport corridors, and growth centres rather than concentrating solely on demolishing and rebuilding the historic core. The east still offers some possibility of ordering development before land becomes prohibitively expensive and politically impossible to reorganise. A credible Dhaka model, therefore, would have to adopt several core principles from Shanghai.

First, infrastructure must precede intensive development. Canals, flood retention areas, sewers, schools, parks, and mass transit should be secured before building permissions multiply. Transport and land use must be planned together, ideally under a central coordinating authority. Metro stations should become centres of compact, mixed-income, and walkable development. Dhaka needs reliable buses, rail interchanges, safe pavements, and shorter distances between homes and jobs in order to boost liveability.

Secondly, water must be treated as infrastructure. Wetlands, canals, and retention ponds which are the machinery that keeps the city alive are often seen as vacant plots awaiting development.

Finally, Dhaka’s regeneration must be accompanied by national decentralisation. Shanghai was able to distribute growth across new towns and the economically powerful Yangtze River delta. Bangladesh must also strengthen secondary cities so that one university, headquarters, hospital, factory, and government job does not pull another household towards the capital.

Can something like the Shanghai Model revive Dhaka? Yes, but only if we are willing to let go of the fantasy that skyscrapers equal modernisation. Dhaka’s crisis is not a shortage of visions, but the repeated failure to defend public interest once a vision collides with bureaucratic rivalry and political influence. Unless our development projects start being planned differently, Dhaka will only acquire more skyscrapers while remaining, at street level, almost impossible to live in.

Zarif Faiaz is editor at the Tech and Startup section in The Daily Star and a research fellow at Tech Global Institute. He can be reached at faiaz@thedailystar.net.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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