Physical Density and Urban Sprawl: A Case of Dhaka City - KTH

CUS, the number of informal settlements in DMA (mega city Dhaka) was 2,156 occupying
area of about 320 hectares.
The urban poor are sharing little amount of land. Most of the times they build their own
houses on the government vacant land which is illegally occupied by powerful people.
Sometimes the owners of the land are unable to build luxurious house so that they build
informal house for the poor people. Majority of them are living in ‘jupri’ type housings which
are made by themselves or by the land owner using thin sheet, bamboo, straw and polythene
(Nahiduzzaman, 2004). Only 18% of them have semi-structured house with permanent walls
where the rest of them are living in the ‘jupri’ and 73% of the poor are living in a single room
with average five members (Hussain, 2004). 54% of the households have no kitchen or
cooking facilities and they cook in their living room or open space in front of their homes
(Nahiduzzaman, 2004). ’Jupri’ is the local name of informal housings which are made by the
earth materials.
The level of settlements of the urban poor can be classified in different ways according to the
available service and infrastructure of that settlements like the ‘Bustee’ or substandard
housing on privately owned and ‘Bastuhara colonies’ (or squatter settlements, substandard
housing built illegally on publicly owned land, including railway tracks and sites of the
‘Bhashaman Janogosthi’ (or pavement dwellers/floating population). The approximate
proportion of such three groups of the poor is 50:45:05 (Islam and Shafi, 2004).
The people who live in such types of settlements are doing works mostly in the informal
sector like tricycle rickshaw pullers, hawkers and vendors, shop assistants, construction
workers and other day labours, domestic workers or maids, small shopkeepers, waste pickers,
etc. and members in the formal sectors like export oriented garment industries (mostly
females), and very low paid public and private sector employees.
3.9.1 Location of informal settlements
Informal settlements can be seen in any part of Dhaka city but major informal settlements are
located in the periphery of the city. The western fringes, for instance the fringe areas of
Dhanmondi and Mohammadpur have the major informal settlements (Figure-3.8). A lot of
informal settlements are located in the Mirpur area as well because most of the garments
factories of Dhaka city are located in that area. Besides there are a lot of informal settlements
are located in the three thanas of Old Dhaka namely: Kotwali, Sutrapur and Lalbagh (Figure:
3.8).
There are also some informal settlements located in the inner city areas but the area of the
settlement is small. A lot of informal settlements are located in the Agargaon in Mirpur thana,
Tejgaon, Mohakhali and Mogh bazaar in Ramna thana as well as Kalabagan in Dhanmondi
thana (Fig: 3.8) which are the inner part of the city. There are 85% of informal settlements or
like them in inner city part that are located in the Mirpur, Agargaon, Korail, Bashentek and
along the rail line or flood protection embankment (LGED, 1996).
Although most of the informal settlements are located in the above mentioned areas, these
types of settlements can be seen in any commercial, residential and educational areas.
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