Rickshaw garages vary significantly, from cramped tin shed storage spaces with a handful of rickshaws to large half-open structures of bamboo and corrugated iron. In a 2019 paper for the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies, Khandoker Abdus Salam and Rezaul Karim estimated that there are 1.1 million cycle-rickshaws operating on the streets of Dhaka, accommodated in garages across the city. They blur the functions of sleeping, working and entrepreneurship. They accommodate varying numbers of workers throughout the year, depending on the seasons. We found that both mess dormitories and rickshaw garages are brimming with movement and business. We interviewed more than 100 people passing through these spaces in search of work and income, from rickshaw drivers, construction workers and garment workers to small-scale entrepreneurs. These are typically located on the margins of the city in neighbourhoods such as Mirpur, Rayerbazar, Kamrangirchar, Shonir Akhra and Badda. We were examining two kinds of spaces linked to seasonal and labour migration: rickshaw garages and mess dormitories. Our research was based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork that we both conducted between 20. This kind of ranking inevitably privileges the perspectives of certain urban occupants and workers over others, often overlooking communities in urban peripheries. The Economist’s global liveability index is based on the experiences of expats rather than citizens. While such lists tell a compelling story, it is an inherently biased one. As Helemul Alam of the Daily Star put it, that ranking makes it the “seventh least liveable city in the world”. In the 2023 edition of its annual global liveability index, the Economist Intelligence Unit (the research and analysis division of the Economist Group) ranked the Bangladeshi capital 166 out of 173 cities. (Photo by Syed Mahamudur Rahman/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Women dancing in the rain at Ramna Park in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi capital boasts around 23 million residents. Like many fast-growing megacities in Asia and Africa, Dhaka, in Bangladesh, is often stigmatised as one of the most unliveable cities on earth, due to overcrowding, slums and substandard housing.
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