Compact townships promise to reduce urban congestion

The tendency to hold on to ownership rights prevents the planned and controlled use of lands, setting the country back, economists said yesterday.
To accommodate the fast growing population, the country is losing 1-2 percent of agricultural land a year, Salim Rashid, chairperson of Compact Township Foundation, said at a seminar. The Foundation was launched yesterday.
“How will the people be fed if this continues?” he said while presenting his keynote paper.
Rashid, also a development economist, suggested urbanisation in a decentralised way or on a compact township basis.
“Not only are compact townships a solution to the problems of urbanisation, floods, industrialisation and agro-production, it would also help the nation achieve double-digit economic growth.”
A compact township is an agglomeration of houses, hospitals, schools, markets, rural industries and local government units that provide all basic services to a population of about 20,000 people.
Akbar Ali Khan, an economist and former adviser to caretaker government, said a very pertaining challenge facing the country is in reconciling the huge population to the limited supply of land.
“Land is a fundamental concept in Bangladesh, but we hardly talk on this issue.”
He cited a study in the US which said for every 12.5 people one hectare of land is needed for their non-agriculture needs.
“In that context, for the 16 crore people of Bangladesh the entire land area would have
to be dedicated for non-agricultural needs. But, we are getting by -- through hunching.”
Bangladesh's economic growth is in positive territory by quantity.
“But if we think about the qualitative growth, it will be negative. And if we cannot relate the mass people with the limited land in planned way, it wouldn't be long before the quantitative growth, too, trespasses to the wrong side of zero.”
Khan cited the case of India, where apart from compact villages corporate villages are set up in a centralised manner.
“But in our country the villages or the towns are all over the place.”
He said people's unwillingness to let go of the land they inherited poses a major setback to establishing compact townships in Bangladesh.
“This issue should be addressed first before proceeding further with the concept of compact townships,” Khan said, while calling for support from the private sector in applying the concept in Bangladesh.
Rehman Sobhan, a noted economist and chairman of Centre for Policy Dialogue, too, called for decentralisation, while touching on the thorny issue of people's deep ties to ancestral lands.
“It is a socio-political issue. During reallocation of lands and final settlement, people will invariably question who the decision maker is.”
Abdul Muyeed Chowdhury, chairperson of BRAC Net and a former adviser to caretaker government, said there is no alternative to the compact township concept in Bangladesh.
“The government should pore over the computerised records of existing lands to identify the cultivable lands, water bodies, forest lands and settlement areas.”
However, decentralisation must be accompanied with provincial government, he said.
“Although Bangladesh is a small country in terms of land, it's a big one in terms of population. For any little task we have to come to Dhaka.”
Jamilur Reza Choudhury, vice-chancellor of Asia Pacific University, proposed a strong rail network as an alternative to compact townships.
“If we can introduce commuter trains, physical movement will be easier and less time-consuming. Rural-urban migration will drop as well.”
Mahbub Jamil, chairman of Singer Bangladesh, said: “All the activities are now centralised in Dhaka -- it is a major reason for unplanned urbanisation centring the capital city.”