Sky high Dhaka land prices!

Photo: STAR

An illuminating observation about the matter, published in the front page of a local English daily on 18th. January, is a fact of life in Dhaka today. It is not going to change in the foreseeable future. A very logical and important reason for this was unfortunately not touched upon by the writer.
Basically, it is because we have gone for horizontal rather than vertical building policy as decided by our authorities. Hence prices of land and rents for buildings and flats are going higher, primarily for residential accommodation. By limiting the heights of the buildings, we have limited the number of people living per square foot of built up land area of the building.
Just for example, in a five storied building having five flats of say 2500 sft. area, we have eight people living; then for the built up floor area of 2500sft. we have a total of 5X8=40 people living; which works out to 62.5sft. built up floor area per person. If the building was double the height, with 10 flats, then the floor area per person would have come down to 31.25 sft! If only the rules for height allowed for buildings can be relaxed and increased, then in Dhaka we could have twice the number of people living per sft. of built up area! However, the reality is that our position regarding water supply and electricity is inadequate right now. So the outcome would have been just more misery! Why can't we have facilities for increased supply of power and potable water, say twice the projected need?
Only then we may live reasonably in high-rises for the next decade at least! It only underscores the need for added provision for basic needs like water and power; which should be the first priority for financial allocation; possibly higher than education and health care; which can be met by the private sector.