Rajuk's apartments
Rajuk is planning to build one hundred thousand apartments in Uttara, Purbachol, and Jhilmil project. These apartments will be constructed in eleven thousand plots. This is good news for Dhaka's citizens.
However, I have my reservations about dividing open land into plots and then constructing apartment buildings. Why does Rajuk need to divide open spaces into tiny plots and then make apartment buildings? In this process we will have the same type of apartment buildings that are growing like mushrooms in Dhaka. Like the existing apartment buildings, these new ones will also not have enough air ventilation and light indoors, not to mention outdoors for recreational facilities.
Instead of plots, Rajuk should arrange these new apartment buildings in large open spaces. The buildings can be made higher storied than Rajuk originally planned. This will save land and the buildings will have more spaces between them. The buildings will share common facilities like parks, playgrounds, community centres, etc. There are ample examples of such government made apartment buildings in Singapore. I mentioned Singapore because they have similar high population density like Dhaka.
My second suggestion is regarding car parking facilities in these new apartments. Let us have these apartments for those families who do not own private cars. This will save precious land otherwise wasted for car parking and will also cut down prices of the apartments. Middle income families with no car will be encouraged to buy these apartments. This will also comply with the government's objective as they have expressed that these apartment buildings are for ordinary citizens of Dhaka.
The third suggestion is that Rajuk should hold a two-tier design competition in association with the professional bodies concerned. The first tier will hold a master plan competition and the second tier will involve design of individual apartment buildings. Afterwards, the government can deploy private developers to build these buildings and sell with marginal profit.
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