Our world is going through an unprecedented energy crisis. The increasing global energy demand combined with declining energy resources have resulted in such crisis. Moreover, energy sector is also claimed to be one of the major contributors of climate change as 65% of world's green house gas (GHG) emission is energy related. A huge share of this energy is consumed by the cities and buildings. Reducing energy consumption by the building sector as well as shifting to green energy sources have become one of the prime agendas to address both the issues of climate change and energy security. Several alternative buildings and neighbourhoods have been emerged in developed countries to address this issue. Unfortunately, even after the successful existence of such alternatives for more than a decade, to date these have not yet been very successful to create a market demand. This paper argues that developing countries are rather in a favourable position due to some particular contexts for being successful in the wider deployment of these alternatives. This paper, through an indepth literature review and personal experiences of the author as an architect and a Dhaka city dweller, examines and presents the potentiality of energy-plus urban developments in the unique
context of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.