Urban Planning and Development: An Analysis of People's Perception Regarding Rajshahi Development Authority’s Initiatives

Abstract

The Rajshahi Development Authority (RDA), playing a pivotal role in ensuring sound and healthy urban growth, is the main entity responsible for planning and implementing development projects.  after forming by the ordinance of 1976, RDA took various initiatives. In this paper, we try to reflect those initiatives, including land use patterns, the creation of residential areas, road infrastructure development, constructing bus and truck terminals, building markets, industrial and commercial area development, recreational facilities, and planning for enhancing open green spaces, etc. In accordance with the first development masterplan of 1984, RDA sorted out the land use pattern of rajshahi City, in which RDA designated the residential areas, commercial areas, agricultural land areas, industrial areas, open spaces, etc. Therefore, through the implementation of the subsequent master plan named the ‘ Rajshahi Metropolitan Development Plan’ (RMDP), RDA accomplished diverse development schemes in designated land areas, such as building housing estates in residential areas, constructing several industrial and commercial institutions, building markets, and constructing road infrastructures in their respective land areas. Afterwards, the perception of city dwellers regarding these initiatives is measured in a statistical scale,  and we tried to provide a notion about what people think, whether these initiatives are satisfactory and sustainable or not. In fine, visualization and recommendations for the further study are drawn in a nutshell.