Housing crisis, Dhaka would need 10 million new apartments by 2015

WHEN the government's regulatory authority, Rajdhani Unnayan Kartikakhya (Rajuk) remained busy during the past two decades in developing land in and around the city for the privileged, the private housing industry grew. During this period the private developers handed over nearly 80,000 new housing units to their clients. 

Developers apprehend that if last two years' slump, facing the housing market, continues the city would await a severe accommodation crisis. 

Dhaka city adds half a million people to its population each year given the growth rate of 4.34 per cent, as the World Bank and other concerned sources indicate.

To accommodate the new people the city would need, according to an estimate, at least 10 million new units by the year 2015.

Dhaka city's phenomenal increase in land price adds to housing cost. Since the early '70s land price at Dhanmondi rose by 12,000 per cent, shows a study. 

The city's already sky high land price continues to soar due to its non-availability for sale while the demand only increases.

An age-old land record system, taxation structure and cumbersome land transfer procedure have only worsened the situation in the city, with the lowest land-man ratio in the world, said a study conducted by Suman Kumar Mitra, Md Abu Nayeem Sohag and Mohammad Aminur Rahman, two teachers of the Urban and Regional Planning Department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (Buet).

The real-estate companies' hunger for land for housing projects further drove up the land price, as they compete with each other for a single plot of land, said the study.

The study, 'Land Price in Dhaka City: Distribution Characteristics and Trend of Changes' says the pressure on limited land in Dhaka city intensified the competition, leading to indiscriminate filling of lowland in and around the city to make way for unplanned urban growth.

The study identified the physical factors that influenced the land price in Dhaka. Obviously a plot at planned neighbourhood close to a wide main road, with wide access road, surface quality of the road, proximity to the main road, duration of water logging and distance of the marketplace and the nearest health facility, would fetch the best price.

The study suggested setting up of an information database to regulate the market to minimise artificially created land crisis and ensure to the citizens equitable access to land and overcome the problem of speculation.

(The Financial Express-30.07.2007)