Residential zone plagued by business establishments
Gulshan Model Town, which was originally a residential area, is turning into a commercial zone with uncontrolled growth of business establishments.
Corporate offices, garment factories, foreign agency offices, shopping malls, restaurants, hotels and private universities have marred the area's basic residential features.
CM Shafi Sami, former adviser to the caretaker government and presently president of the Gulshan Society, said vast area of this residential town has been turned commercial over the years severely impacting quality of life in the area.
Government authorities, including Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk), have adapted rules for letting Gulshan to be commercialised in total contravention of its original concept of a residential area.
“Sadly, the authorities have encouraged the creeping commercialisation by allowing commercial establishments along the main avenue,” said Sami.
“They have also countenanced the commercialisation that has crept into areas designated as residential. Gulshan today is infested with such illegal establishments.”
Besides, there are instances of encroachments on public spaces like roads and sidewalks by local and foreign institutions and powerful individuals.
Government and private offices, community centres, rest houses, hospitals and clinics, English medium schools and boutiques are seen all over Gulshan.
Shirin Shila, joint general secretary of Gulshan Society, said huge traffic loads due to commercial set-ups and garment factories have made life miserable there.
“It is the inaction of the authorities concerned that has resulted in the destruction of residential atmosphere of the area,” she said.
Moreover, the beneficiaries are so powerful that the authorities in many cases cannot enforce laws and rules to save the ordinary residents, said Shirin who won a High Court stay on the government's move to commercialise the Gulshan main avenue letting the buildings go up to eight-storey, beyond the six-storey ceiling.
Prof Muzaffer Ahmad, president of environmentalist group Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (Bapa), said the plan of Gulshan had two designated sites -- Gulshan circle-1 and 2 -- for commercialisation to meet the needs of the model town.
“So, indiscriminate illegal commercialisation in Gulshan and Banani has no justification and is unacceptable,” he said.
According to Salma Shafi, an architect, disproportionate land use in residential area inevitably results in such a suffocating situation.
In case the government intends to allow major thoroughfare or periphery of a residential area for commercialisation, it must carry out analysis of possible traffic situation and its implications, she said.
Architect Iqbal Habib, member secretary of Bapa, said, “Rajuk itself is a violator of Dhaka's master plan and building laws.”
Rajuk has turned two sites designated for fuel filling stations, one in Gulshan and one in Banani, into plots for high-rise commercial buildings, said Rajuk sources.
Rajuk started to use a puzzling term 'non-residential' for otherwise uses of residential buildings from 1980s, Habib said adding that Dhaka City Corporation that issues trade licences in the city also cannot evade its responsibility for the situation.
Rajuk Chairman Md Shafiqul Islam said it is true that there are incidents of deviant uses of residential buildings for commercial and non-residential purposes. “There are many offices housed in residential buildings. We too are concerned,” he said.
“They should either be evicted or slapped with exorbitant tax to discourage commercialisation of a residential neighbourhood,” the Rajuk chairman said.
A senior town planner of Rajuk said that in fact conversion from residential to commercial has occurred with the government's high-level decision from time to time.
“In such cases, where a decision is taken at government's policy level, the matter is not even placed at Rajuk's planning section,” he said.
First-ever in history, Rajuk served a notice in May last year to the illegal commercial occupiers of residential buildings in the city's designated residential areas asking them to vacate illegal occupancy within two months.
The notice was served to four categories of unauthorised non-residential and commercial usages of residential buildings including restaurants, colleges and universities, hospitals and garment factories. But the move has been stalled for reasons unknown.
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