Footpaths for Dhaka

Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust has spent over 25 years arguing that Dhaka's transport problem is not a shortage of roads but a shortage of places to walk. Its survey across six areas of the city — including Mirpur, Uttara, Gazipur and Old Dhaka — found no footpath at all in 44% of the area studied, and its pedestrian circulation study of Ward 34 in Dhaka North documented what blocks the footpaths that do exist. The organisation campaigns on car control, walking and cycling, public transit, public toilets, noise and public space, and is a persistent voice in national transport policy. Its case is a health case as much as a mobility one: the people walking are the people breathing the traffic.