Ph.D. Candidate
Mr Masud Parves RANA

Rapid Growth of Dhaka City of Bangladesh: A Study on Landuse Planning and Environmental Sustainability

During the last few decades, the cities of developing countries are experiencing enormous urbanization.

This urban turn has resulted in emergence of megacities with high spatial and demographic expansion as well as environmental challenges. These cities are basically confronted with increasing poverty, socio-spatial fragmentation, inefficiency in good governance, strong expansion of informal activities and environmental degradation.

My study focuses on Dhaka of Bangladesh which is 11th largest (more than 12 million people) megacity and one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The city is a habitat of 3.4 million urban poor who are living in 4900 slums and squatter settlements with inadequate living facilities and poor environmental conditions.

Particularly, this study is interested to examine urban poors’ access to environmental infrastructural services like, water supply, sanitation, drainage etc. The preliminary research questions, which urgently needed to consider environmentalism of the poor are:
Why have the urban poor been unable to voice their vision of the city?
-- What is the politics of place within which urban poor are stigmatized and blamed for environmental degradation, and unable to claim civic rights?
-- How the sustainable city discourse is practiced that it excludes the most basic concerns of a majority of city dwellers?
-- What strategies for reform are currently being proposed and by which groups (actors)?
-- What interest groups are benefited from the status quo?
-- Are problems exacerbated by the very centralized nature of government in Bangladesh?