41pc RAJUK area used for human habitation

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Munima Sultana
Forty-one per cent of the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (RAJUK) area has been used for human habitation leaving developers to go outside of its 1,500 square kilometres jurisdiction for future urban development, a study said.
The study of the Dhaka Transport Coordination Board (DTCB) found that the Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has already used 83 per cent of its total area of 140.78 sq km for the same purpose.
The study titled Dhaka Urban Transport Network Study (DHUTS) and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) revealed that future urbanisation will be possible in a total of 687.14 sq km area in which population will be decentralised to all sides - east, west, north and south.
The JICA funded the study to find out future urban structure and population frameworks on the basis of traffic demand by 2025 as well as to propose urban transport network plans to be integrated with urban development spatial planning.
The year-long study, to end in March next year, is aimed at reducing traffic congestion in the city through facilitating future urban development along the Mass Rapid Transport (MRT) corridor as a catalyst to change urban structure from mono-centric mega city to multi-core mega urban region.
"Dhaka, with more than 10 million population, should be developed as a multi-core mega urban region with a vision for 2050," said Dr Yoshihiro Asano, a study team member.
Under the proposed future urban structure, he said, Dhaka mega-urban region will consist of the areas within 20-25 km radius from the centre of DCC.
From the RAJUK statistics, the DTCB study showed that more than 50 housing development proposals by private developers are now under process on 7,000 acres of land and hinted that population in these areas would be 0.9 million by 2025 if half of the areas are developed.
It also revealed that 11,950 acres of residential areas being developed by the RAJUK in Uttara-3, Purbachal, Jheelmil-1 and 2, Ruhitpur, Savar, Gazipur and Dhamsona would accommodate 50 per cent of the city's total population by 2025.