What if Dhaka stops building new buildings?

Imagine waking up to a city without the constant drilling, hammering, and rumble of construction. No clouds of dust hanging over the roads, no trucks hauling bricks and steel through already jam-packed streets.

For a city whose identity has become synonymous with rapid urbanisation, Dhaka taking a break from building new buildings would be interesting, but not without some significant challenges. The relationship between environment and development has always been inversely proportional. It feels as though construction has to come at the expense of nature. Well, globally, the building and construction sector is responsible for nearly half of all natural material extraction. So, the environment may finally get a chance to breathe if we stop construction.

But as appealing as that sounds, it is much easier said than done. So, what happens if Dhaka stops building new buildings?

Dhaka may finally be able to breathe

Construction and demolition (C&D) waste is among the biggest contributors of dust and fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) in Dhaka. It is difficult to get around the city without suffocating from cement dust. Studies have previously suggested that Greater Dhaka produces about 3.5 million bricks annually and emits 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 to meet the demand for bricks every year. Halting construction in Dhaka would also reduce the demand for bricks… automatically reducing the emissions from brick kilns.

Moreover, most C&D materials and waste are transported via diesel trucks, which only consume more fuel, add more exhaust, and worsen road congestion. Therefore, a halt in construction would also help improve the road conditions of Dhaka.

In Dhaka, building a new structure often requires an old one to be demolished first. But here’s the catch: buildings store an enormous amount of embodied carbon. This is the amount of emissions already released during the building's construction. Therefore, if we simply demolish the entire structure just to build another entirely from scratch, we are letting all the previous emissions go to waste while simultaneously starting a new cycle of construction emissions.

What is more frustrating is the sheer volume of waste we have come to accept as normal. In 2016, Greater Dhaka alone generated an astonishing 1.28 million tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) waste. If no new construction were taking place, that mountain of rubble would stop growing. The pressure on Dhaka's already overwhelmed waste management system would ease, and perhaps we would realise just how much of this waste was avoidable in the first place.

But... how would Dhaka accommodate its people?

Because Bangladesh’s economy is stubbornly centralised in the capital, Dhaka is already bursting at the seams with over 36 million people. Every day, more arrive on a one-way ticket, looking for work in a country where all roads lead to the capital. More human beings naturally means a higher demand for shelter. Back in 2025, estimates indicated that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were living on Dhaka's streets. The city suffers from a severe housing shortage, and stopping construction would turn that shortage into an absolute catastrophe.

Then there’s the rent. If the headcount rises while the number of liveable buildings stays fixed, rental prices will shoot straight up, but tenants are already sweating every month. “Coming to Dhaka from Chittagong, one of the first things you notice is how much more expensive everyday life can be. House rents in Dhaka are considerably higher, and finding a decent apartment in a convenient and safe area can take up a large part of your monthly income,” said *Ali Ahmed, a school teacher living in Badda.

Properties that are already a luxury only the elite can touch would become utterly untouchable. As a result, deprived of new housing, incoming residents will simply be pushed into informal settlements. A 2019 UNDP report found that one in three people in Dhaka lived in informal settlements, areas already struggling with severe safety and sanitation issues.

If the city expands outward instead, that growth will bleed into the metropolitan periphery. Decentralisation would be great, but this wouldn't be a neat spread to other major urban areas; it may mean taking up the rural land surrounding Dhaka. We may be looking at rampant urban sprawl, nightmarish daily commutes, and the rapid conversion of vital agricultural and low-lying land into developed plots.

Meanwhile, inside the existing city limits, overcrowding would reach its peak. Apartments would get packed tighter, more families would end up sharing the same units, and entire neighborhoods would feel more suffocated than they already do.

As the population and economy expand, Dhaka desperately needs more schools, hospitals, office spaces, shops, and public amenities. The pressure on these services is already apparent. “Even when I am sick, I avoid going to the hospital. Not only are private hospitals expensive; most hospitals, whether private or public, are so overcrowded that I feel like I’ll get even more sick just being there,” said *Raha Khan, a university student living alone in Dhaka. Without new builds, the city will struggle to deliver even the most basic essential services. Moreover, Dhaka has to replace buildings that become structural hazards over time.

Ultimately, while stopping construction is an eco-friendly dream, environmental sustainability is not achieved if people can't afford a place to live. This would simply deepen the divide between the property-owning elite and everyone else trying to secure a home.

Then what can Dhaka do?

Should it stop building? Should it keep building? Or should it, perhaps, repurpose? Urban planning in this city has been obsessed with the tallest towers, the fanciest long glass windows, and the megaprojects costing astronomical amounts of crores. But maybe it's time to look at architecture differently. Maybe our success shouldn’t be measured by the skyscrapers we build, but by how we give our “scraps” a new life. Because did you know that, as of 2024, Dhaka had over 6,000 abandoned houses? Before we build something new, are we making the best use of what we already have? Cities around the world have begun doing exactly that.

New York City realised that a good chunk of its office space was empty and decided to convert it into apartments. As a result, by 2026, it has overhauled its entire building code (effective July 2027) to make repurposing effortless. And when a building does have to go, instead of smashing it with a wrecking ball, they practice "deconstruction", carefully unbuilding everything so the materials can live a second life.

Paris did something similar for the 2024 Olympics. Instead of going into massive debt to construct shiny new stadiums that would sit empty after the final ceremony, they renovated existing arenas and built temporary ones, designing the Olympic Village from day one to become permanent housing later. These cities show that perhaps Dhaka doesn’t need to start from scratch.

Dhaka could learn from Barbara Buser

When an old, dusty building comes across her way, Barbara Buser sees potential. At 72, Buser is Europe’s queen of giving old buildings a second chance. While developers love a good demolition, she has spent decades practicing "circular construction", a fancy way of saying: don't throw away what you can reuse.

Let’s look at her famous Gundeldinger Feld project in Basel, Switzerland. Instead of bulldozing an abandoned, rusty machine factory, Buser asked the neighbors what they wanted. Over 400 locals wrote back, and today, that factory is a thriving community space filled with restaurants, studios, and cultural spots. And keeping the original walls meant they could keep rents cheaper than standard market rates.

Back in Tanzania, she watched locals turn scrap metal into sturdy roofs and old timber into tables. Today, instead of drafting fancy sketches and ordering fresh concrete, she does it backwards: check the salvaged steel, windows, and panels that already exist, and let those materials tell what the building should be.

Our hyper-expanding Dhaka, take notes. We don't always need bigger, taller, and newer. A city doesn't get better by endlessly pouring fresh concrete. It gets better when we make smarter use of what we already have and actually talk to the people who live here.

This isn’t impossible for Dhaka

Just beside the Nutshell Today office, grabbing a cup of tea reveals Graam Chaa employees taking orders from an old vehicle repurposed as a cashier counter. Who could have thought a functional space could be created out of a rusty old car?

Aloki, a venue that’s quite popular in Dhaka right now, from weddings to fests to concerts, was repurposed from a garment factory. Or, take a look at Chef’s Table Courtside, where people visit for a delicious meal amid a natural atmosphere, and you may notice the restaurant kitchens are actually shipping containers. Around the world, old shipping containers have found second lives as cafes, classrooms, offices, clinics, student housing and emergency shelters.

According to a recent TBS report, Rajuk has plans for a Tk5,258 crore project to “revitalise” approximately 6,500 acres of Puran Dhaka, with plans for modern housing, wider roads, and open space. Puran Dhaka is overcrowded, its roads are notoriously narrow, infrastructure is inadequate, and many buildings are in poor condition. But the area’s dense mix of old homes, warehouses, and commercial buildings is also a huge stock of existing structures and materials. We don’t have to romanticise every ageing building in Old Dhaka, but we can ask: what actually needs to be demolished, and what can be repaired, adapted, or carefully taken apart?

In Korail, where every inch of ground is already claimed, architects decided to build vertically. Jonaki Ghor is a lightweight structure perched cleverly on four steel legs directly above an active UNICEF-supported wastewater treatment plant, meant to be a community space in an otherwise fire-prone area. By hovering over the facility without disturbing anything below, it proves a point: building doesn't have to start with demolition.

And when a building has truly reached the end of its life, there is still a more responsible way to say goodbye. Deconstruction allows concrete, steel, timber, bricks, doors and windows to be recovered and reused instead of becoming another mountain of rubble destined for a landfill.

Of course, repurposing is not a foolproof solution. Dhaka cannot renovate its way out of a housing crisis. It cannot stop “development” while millions of people continue arriving in search of work, education and healthcare. That brings us back to a major problem: centralisation. As long as Bangladesh remains overwhelmingly centred on Dhaka, the capital will continue absorbing more people than it can comfortably accommodate. But… what if Dhaka wasn’t centralised?

* indicates that the name has been changed to protect the person's anonymity.