The Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha is scheduled to finalise a plan for the redevelopment of the capital鈥檚 Lalbagh and Hazaribagh to make the areas climate-resilient and better living.
Urban planners, however, find huge challenges, including mistrust on the RAJUK to implement the first redevelopment plan in the capital city.
The town planning body of the capital at its office on Thursday organised a launching event of a study conducted between June 2023 and June 2024 on the area where experts came up with the comments.
The Climate Resilient and Green Action Plan for Hazaribagh and Lalbagh was prepared by the RAJUK in cooperation with the Deutsche Gesellschaft f眉r Internationale Zusammenarbeit and funded with the help of the City Climate Finance Gap Fund.
Expressing concern over the implementation of the plan, housing and public works minister RAM Obaidul Muktadir Chowdhury said that he had been hearing about the plan for years but found no progress in place.
鈥榃e have been hearing about the green development of Hazaribagh and Lalbagh since 2011. When will you (RAJUK) implement the work? What use is a plan if there is no implementation?鈥� he said as chief guest of the event, asking the RAJUK to start implementation of the plan.
Urban planner and chief executive of the Troyee Associates, Mohammad Fazle Reza Sumon, presented the plan where the 63 acres of land was divided into 11 blocks, including two utility blocks and a commercial block.
Keeping all civic facilities, the residential blocks would give a comfort life for the people of the area, once was the worst polluted part of the city for leather factories.
In the plan, the RAJUK proposed sufficient space for road, part and playground as well as greeneries to make the area resilient to the climate, said officials.
The RAJUK chairman Siddiquer Rahman Sarker said that the redevelopment would contribute to improve the environment as well as the economy of the area.
Professor in the department of urban and regional planning at Jahangirnagar Universty, Akter Mahmud, said that the authority must give priority on structure and people inviting a minimum change.
Bangladesh Institute of Planners鈥� president Professor Adil Mohammad Khan said that the redevelopment was very expensive so the authority should not be ambitious.
Housing secretary Nabirul Islam, the GIZ acting country director Martina Burkard, the RAJUK鈥檚 chief town planner Ashraful Islam and land owners of the areas, among others, spoke at the event.