Silicon dream amidst a concrete jungle

Dhaka’s chaotic modernity

Dhaka is not simply growing; it is erupting with rapid, unplanned development that strains infrastructure and sharpens inequalities. The city clashes between centuries-old patterns and modern ambition, creating one of the world's most vivid experiments in chaotic urban growth. The air is thick with dust and diesel, the streets are filled with impatient horns, and the landscape is an eclectic mix of rickshaw art, glass towers, and a tangled web of overhead wires—the city's nervous system gone awry. Despite new expressways and metro lines, the city's infrastructure fails to address fundamental issues like drainage, which clogs after rain, reflecting a disconnect between design and nature.

The divide of modern and traditional Dhaka

The stark contrasts within Dhaka are visually and socially striking. Beside shimmering corporate glass towers and luxury high-rises with rooftop restaurants and apartments worth millions, lies one of the world's largest slums—a dense maze of tin and bamboo. This divide highlights the "modernity" of a privileged few versus the daily struggles of the majority. The slums, home to the essential workers supporting the city’s elite, suffer from perilous wiring, poor sanitation, and constant fire risks, while neighboring towers enjoy fiber-optic internet and uninterrupted power.

Transformation through digital culture

The city's youth, with a median age of about 30, have turned to digital spaces as a refuge from the daily chaos. Social life increasingly moves online due to street harassment, traffic, and pollution. E-commerce and delivery apps have reshaped Dhaka’s economy, weaving together old alleyways and new technology. Startups driven by young entrepreneurs are developing apps for transportation, health, and groceries, offering grassroots solutions often more effective than official plans. At the same time, parts of "Old Dhaka" are being aestheticized by influencers, creating romanticized views of its gritty reality, while the city balances between sanitized malls and raw, sensory-filled streets.

A city on the brink

Dhaka’s leap from a 19th-century city into the 21st century is turbulent and unsteady. The city skips crucial developmental stages, resulting in extremes—for example, a world-class metro stops near markets where traditional practices like live chicken slaughtering continue. The rich and poor coexist within eyesight but remain separated by an invisible wall of capital. Environmental fragility threatens the city’s future, with falling groundwater levels and the looming risk of earthquakes largely ignored amid daily survival struggles.

"Dhaka's modernity remains a patchwork—smoothing travel for some while ignoring the failures causing the congestion in the first place."

The reality of Dhaka reveals a city wrestling with the pressures of rapid development and deep social inequality, where technological advancement and cultural transformation coexist with environmental and infrastructural instability.

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The Business Standard The Business Standard — 2025-11-29

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