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

The open court yard can be used as a semi private or communal space. It has been
explored during the findings that the low income people use wood, bamboo or local
materials for cooking and do their household chores in the internal roads or inside the
living room, so the terrace can be used as private space to accomplish the household
chores. It can also provide space between the houses and as a result the provision of day
light can come inside the houses.
The surrounding roads and footpaths width depend on the circulation of the vehicles in
that area. The road width among clusters inside the block should be standard so that the
motorized vehicles or fire brigade vehicles can enter easily inside the block.
It also became evident in the findings chapter that there is no provision of cross
ventilation in the houses of low income settlements due to their closeness and
unavailability of window. It can be recommended that the houses should be designed
with windows in the front wall or wall beside terrace. No window should be fitted on the
back side wall because the surrounding road is behind the houses which can cause noise
and air pollution.
Most of the houses in the informal settlements are made by local construction materials
or earth materials. So the local construction materials or earth materials can be used
during construction to control cost so that the low income people can afford those houses.
On the other hand the low income people do not have expertise to build two storey
houses by using earth materials. So the local people can be trained to minimize labor
cost.
The Central area of Dhaka city can be considered as a mix land use area with very high
and medium physical density though the spatial qualities in some formal settlements are
not satisfactory due to the closeness of buildings. However, urban sprawl is the
contemporary issue of Dhaka city due to its horizontal expansion and development of low
dense informal houses in the periphery. So the government should consider the low
income housing problem to increase physical density and efficiency of space of informal
settlements. The government can provide vacant space by cheap price to make housing
block with its surrounding roads and footpath. As a result the government can control the
density and space usability of the informal settlements which may be the solution to
reduce urban sprawl.
7.2 Conclusion
The study investigates the relationship between physical densities, spatial qualities and
urban sprawl. From the analysis of physical densities for both formal and informal
settlements, it can be said that the physical densities of formal housing settlements are
very high and the land use characteristics of the city center is mix. In spite of that the area
of the city is increasing horizontally due to the development of a lot of informal
settlements in the periphery and center where the FAR value is very low but the
percentage of land coverage is very high. As a result it is very difficult to provide
infrastructure facilities to the periphery. The traffic congestion and high cost of traveling
are regular phenomenon of Dhaka city. The main reason behind this problem is the lack
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