Housing estates are need of the time: architect

Housing estates and mass transport systems can solve much of the residential and traffic congestion in the capital, an urban planner and architect said yesterday.

Such measures can also ensure community living and lower violence and crimes, said Adnan Morshed, associate professor at the Catholic University of America's architecture and planning department.

“Plots are killing the cities,” he said referring to the Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkho's projects of making plots and selling those to individuals.

Such a method of housing is a rural concept and is not ideal for urban settings, where a lot of people live together, Morshed said at the concluding panel of the two-day international conference on urban poverty.

“As the individuals build houses on plots, a lot of space between the plots is wasted. If you build housing estates, that space together can make an open space like park.”

Such open space can be used for community engagement, he said at the programme organised by the Power and Participation Research Centre and the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics at the city's LGED Auditorium.  Experts from home and abroad discussed urban poverty, housing, water, sanitation, education and health. The urban poor, around eight million in Bangladesh, are often deprived of such facilities.

he researchers said urban poverty is rising and the quality of life of the urban poor is worse than those of the rural poor, as they can get help from the community in times of economic and social shocks.