Lately we have been filled with hopes for prospects of relief from horrendous congestion in city life. Such hopes arise from the following catalogue of plans and projections.

Nowadays the Dhaka city is witnessing a blitz of publicity through print media about availability of real estate properties in private sector in and around the city. The main thrust of such publicity, so far as the city is concerned, relates to residential apartments, shopping malls, commercial and office complexes; whereas in the city suburbs, it centres on residential housing plots. A great interest is being evinced by real estate business companies to attract prospective customers to invest in housing plots in city suburbs, such as Savar, Joydevpur, Ashulia, Nabinagar, etc. But it has been observed that development of these suburban areas by private plot owners has been rather slow on account of relative absence of infrastructural facilities like water and gas supply, electricity and adequate communication advantages. Inspite of this, the expansion of the Dhaka city on the northern and north-eastern sides appears to be taking place more rapidly through public and private initia-

tives on account of absence of any natural obstruction. But the Buriganga river seems to act as a deterrent to any appreciable expansion of the city southward.

To relieve congestion in the city streets, government has decided to construct 10 new roads and some by-passes in the interest of smooth flow of traffic. Among the 10 roads, RAJUK and the City Corporation would each construct four roads, while the LGRD Ministry would construct the remaining two.

RAJUK has drawn up a plan to build new townships and satellite towns to disperse the city population and ease pressure on civic services. The plan includes construction of absolutely new townships called Purbachal, and Jheelmeel and satellite towns like Uttara Phase III and East Baridhara. Of these projects, the

Purbachal project is reported to have made some progress, but the other projects are waiting to be taken up for implementation.

Under the Dhaka Urban Transport Project, it is reported that two fly-overs would be constructed, one at Jatrabari and the other at Mohakhali with financial assistance from the World Bank and a third one will be built at the Khilgaon railway level crossing with government's own fund.

A more important project is said to be one under which government is planning to set up an elevated mass rail transit system (monorail) in the capital to cope with growing urbanisation and for easing the traffic congestion that will have positive impact on overall economic development of the country. It is said that the elevated monorail system will bring about a revolu-

tionary change in the transportation system of the capital and give a new dimension of communication for the city dwellers, saving time and money.

All these proposals tend to create an optimistic outlook in the matter of solution of the city's acute congestion problem. But the big question remains how soon these projects will be taken up and expeditiously completed. There is a looming uncertainty about the process of beginning of these projects which may have an adverse impact on metropolitan life, as the ominous reality is that in the time lag that is inevitably involved in completing these projects, the already bloated city population will further grow apace, making the total urban life in the city a complete hell.