Bangladesh is a lower-middle-income country located in the South Asian region with a population of 160 million. The country is split into eight divisions and sixty-four districts to help with the administrative process. Like other developing countries, Bangladesh is also going through rapid urban growth over the last few decades. According to the Planning Commission report 2013, the level of urbanization in this country is increasing at an expeditious rate of 23.30 (2011), which was only 8.78 in the year 1974.
It is anticipated that the growth rate will be 38 by 2021. With the increasing urbanisation, the growth of the urban population also has increased to a ratio of 5.83 compared to the national growth rate, which is 1.99. As a result, 21 new cities emerged in 2011.
According to the Pourashava Ordinance-1977, the area that has more than fifty thousand population with a density of more than 1500 persons per square kilometre and three-fourth population engaged in a non-agriculture activity, is called urban area (Rahman and Islam, 2013). Currently, the country has four large metropolitans, 58 medium and more than four hundred small urban areas which have one-quarter of the total population in the country.
"Currently, the country has four large metropolitans, 58 medium and more than four hundred small urban areas which have one-quarter of the total population in the country"
It is identified that urbanization imposes a negative externality on the environment when three quarters of the country’s population starts to reside in the urban areas (Murshed and Saadat, 2018). With that said, how is Bangladesh planning to mediate the existential cost of urbanization?
The process of urbanization in Bangladesh has been rapid and uneven, it always has been centred around the largest cities, especially Dhaka. Large cities have disproportionately received all the investments and infrastructures compared to other cities. Most major industrial activities and auxiliary business have been concentrated in cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna and Rajshahi.
For example, Dhaka city alone has 80% of the garment factories that are in Bangladesh. And with this aspect, these four cities have 63.87% of the country’s urban population (Sawgat and Roy, 2019). Urban population depends on various factors including work opportunities and socio-economic conditions, which cause overpopulation in these major cities.
However, rapid urbanisation often lacks formal urban governance and effective development control. These create corruption, which creates a process to continuous informal urban development and informal governance resulting in worsening living condition, poor urban quality of living.
"The process of urbanization in Bangladesh has been rapid and uneven, it always has been centred around the largest cities, especially Dhaka"
The urban development in Bangladesh also has major policy biases towards major cities, especially in terms of brazen favouritism. While decentralization of administration and government process to the local level has been done to have a better planning process, much of the local municipalities do not get to contribute to that process. Often they receive the plan after its being developed and finalized where they have little or no contribution. Additionally, these municipalities do not have enough logistics to implement those plans and feel reluctant to accept that plan as it came from outside and without their participation.
Cities like Dhaka has almost reached their peak with scope for any further growth diminishing. The medium cities, on the other hand, have a lot of potential and scope to grow further but very little research has been carried out on that. Even within these few conducted research, it was done mostly with a focus on economic development with limited scope to understand how urbanization impacts climate change.
Also, Bangladesh is considered one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world and will face different layers of negative impacts from it. This will surely force people to take different coping strategies including internal migration.
While Dhaka has already become suffocating with its dense population, regional medium cities with work opportunities such as Mongla are becoming a popular destination for internal migrants. With all these aspects, there is an urgent need to look into the medium cities for better planning of urban development as these cities are also going through a rapid transformation. Proper bottom-up planning backed by holistic research will help the country to develop climate-resilient and liveable regional cities and take the burden away from major cities.
Istiakh Ahmed is working at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development as a Programme Coordinator. His research interest lies in the areas of climate change adaptation, Loss and Damage, climate migration. Istiakh can be reached at istiakh.ahmed@icccad.org