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Between 2010 and 2050, the number of people living in the world’s urban areas is expected to grow by 80 percent – from 3.5 billion to 6.3 billion. This growth will pose great challenges for urban mobility – for the networks of transportation facilities and services that maintain the flow of people and commerce into, out of and within the world’s cities. Bangladesh has witnessed an increased urbanization over the last three decades. It has been estimated that around 38 million people are living in urban areas (27% of total population). Even though the level of urbanization is still relatively high, the urban population growth rate is high at 2.5% per annum, compared to an annual population growth rate of 1.4%. Rapid and uncontrolled urbanization has been creating large growing demand for urban infrastructures and services. Paurashava plays a vital role in urbanization process and in Bangladesh such small township is growing rapidly but of urban infrastructure development in pourashava has not been matching the rapid pace of growing demand, resulting in acute shortages in every sector affecting urban mobility. Also the Urban Governance system is not favorable. So Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) launched Urban Governance and Infrastructure Improvement Project (UGIIP) at different pourashava to enhance the mobility by improving infrastructure and services of these townships.

Rapid population growth throughout Bangladesh has resulted in a steady shift of population from rural to urban areas. In Bangladesh, municipalities are defined based on criteria laid out in the Municipal Ordinance 1977. However, some municipalities have very poor infrastructure and service levels, which raises the question of the validity of the municipal definition criteria contained in the Ordinance. In this work, 18 municipalities in different parts of the Rajshahi region were selected for study, with data collection mainly reliant on secondary sources. It was found that most municipalities in the study area are dominated by rural characteristics. Agricultural activities still play a vital role in occupation patterns and the major share of land use is agrarian, which is clear evidence of a diversion from the municipal declaration criteria stated in the Ordinance. The aims of this study were to explore the formulation of municipalities in accordance with Municipal Ordinance 1977 and to determine existing anomalies in municipal declaration practices.

After more than a decade of meeting the designated objective of increasing productivity in agriculture, the South West coastal polders of Bangladesh have ended up as different man-made disasters. The failure of the polders to deliver the intended outcome is basically attributed to the lack of understanding of their hydro-morphologic al characteristics, inadequacy i n their operation and maintenance, and failure to take into account their social relationship and culture roles. Changes in socioeconomic settings have also forced changes in the designated functions of the polders, but now the emerging context of climate change has become a major issue in rationalizing the coastal polders. In this context, this study is an attempt to review the historical and ongoing process of rationalization of the South West coastal polders, revealing that it is essential to take an integrated view of the hydrologic cycle and the interactions of human interventions. Finally, this paper recommends that an extended cost– benefit analysis with a m ulti-objective focus or a multi-criteria analysis, if monetizing is not possible, should be an option in rationalizing this multi-functional infrastructure. Proper macro-planning would require development of an institution capable of dealing with a task which is multi-dimensional and multidisciplinary in nature.

This article is based on a study of the morphological changes of Dhaka City, the capital of Bangladesh. The main objective of the research is to study the transformation of urban morphology in Dhaka City from 1947 to 2007. Three sample wards (18, 19 and 72) of Dhaka City Corporation are strategically selected as the study areas. Ward 72 has an indigenous type of organic settlement, whereas ward 19 is a planned area, and ward 18 represents a mixed (both planned and informal) type of settlement. In this research, the transformation of urban settlement pattern is examined through space syntax. The results show that the organic settlements (ward 72) are highly integrated both in terms of the local and global syntactic measures (lowest standard deviation for local and global integration, with the highest intelligibility values), and are more connectivity. The scenario is opposite in the case of planned settlements. The characteristics of mixed areas (ward 18) lie in between the organic and planned settlements. Therefore, in summary, it can be stated that the integration, connectivity and intelligibility measures of Dhaka City are found to be high, medium and low for the indigenous, mixed and planned settlement types; respectively.