- Name: Swarajit Sarker
- Year: 2018
- Studio: Final Year Thesis Project
- University: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology
synthesizing Rajshahi as a sustainable walking city
Rajshahi, one of the major metropolitan cities, popularly known as an educational city, is situated beside Padma river-northern part of Bangladesh. It is a small city but becoming a city for developers, financiers, and portfolio property owners, not people! Who need private personal motorize vehicles to maintain their daily activity such as dropping their children at school, scooting off to work, picking up the shopping, the kids, etc. On the other way, only if we have cars, our lives will work.
In my B Arch thesis, I tried to show how a city can be more exciting and alluring if we give focus on the flow of pedestrian movement, make cities more advantageous for public life, rather than a city for cars and parking. In such city cars and motorized vehicles may be the optional instrument. Which can be earmark as a walkable city.
Walkability is not only a pedestrian movement of people, is a measurement of the overall walking condition in a city or a particular area. It depends on how the built environment is friendly for people doing their necessary, social, and optional activities. Several factors affecting the flow of pedestrians include land use, street connectivity, residential density, orientation and proximity of homes and building to watch over the street, placemaking, street designed for the people not only for the car or vehicular movement. Furthermore depends on a walking and biking network as it helps people to pedestrian movement and reaches their destination point without using motorized vehicles. Major infrastructural factors include access to mass transit, presence and quality walkways, buffers to moving traffic (planter strips, on-street parking or bike lanes) and pedestrian crossings, aesthetics, nearby local destinations, air quality, shade or sun in appropriate seasons, street furniture, traffic volume, and speed and wind conditions. This gives a reason, safety, and security, a comfortable and stimulate walking.
To ameliorate the present suffering and convert the city into pedestrian-friendly, some steps are needed to take, such as welcome bikes, plants tree, get parking right, mix the use of space, protect the pedestrian, and shape the spaces making unique and friendly faces, let the transit work, put cars in their place. These steps will help to build a safe, attractive, healthy, sustainable lively city and ensure the quality of life.
Studio Master: Khandaker Shabbir Ahmed, Tahajibul Hossain
Text description provided by the project author.
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