Urbanization and Informal Settlement Condition of Dhaka: A Review of Emerging Challenges and Policy Approaches

Dhaka is one of the largest megacities in the world with huge population. With time this city experiences large scale urban development and is facing several urban challenges in terms of basic urban services, transportation system, water supply and sanitation, waste management and housing due to informal urbanization. Because of centralized service facilities and income opportunities the migrant population is increasing with time drastically with their limited affordability of housing and other public services. The immediate consequence of this is the growth of unhygienic slums and squatter settlements. Several development plans as well as policies were formulated to control the urbanization growth and different policy approaches such as eviction, resettlement and upgrading were adopted to deal with informal settlements of Dhaka. These policies approaches were not very effective, because the scale of the problems is very large and the problems are interconnected with complex phenomenon. To address such problems various initiatives have been taken at different scale both in abroad and local scale by different agencies. Based on their essences the regulatory suggestions considering urbanization and informal settlement issues of Dhaka are recommended on this paper understanding the existing situation.