Introduction
Urbanization is an important manifestation of modernization. Modernization has been considered to be a sign of growth and economic progress. The whole world has been affected by the growth of urbanization. Although the process of urbanization is almost complete in rich industrialized countries, it is a recent phenomenon in the context of developing countries. Thus, developing countries are experiencing urbanization at such a rapid pace that it exceeds their economic growth and their ability to finance it. Like other developed countries, South Asian countries in general, and Bangladesh in particular, have been undergoing a rapid growth in urbanization. Urbanization has been so rapid in these countries that it makes it difficult for the government to maintain social and economic integration and provide for all the impoverished newcomers to the cities.
Since the issue of urbanization has great implications for both developed and developing countries, Jones (2003) discusses the contemporary research and policy formulation on this issue, identifying a number of transitions in the process. The first transition, especially in developing countries, is excessively rapidâwe say âhastyââurbanization. The rate of urbanization is so fast in these countries that many have estimated that 80% of the population of these countries will be living in urban areas by 2025 (Mooya and Chris 2007). Such an excessive speed of urbanization will impel the growth of informal settlements. Historically, these two conceptsârapid urbanization and the growth of informal settlementsâhave a close relationship (Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002).
Poverty, according to Jones (2003), is the second transition. The inhabitants of the informal settlements that spring up in the first transition are mostly, desperately poor. They arrive with nothing and, at least for a long time, have almost nothing. As a result, we see that the rate of increase in urban poverty is far higher than that in rural poverty. The rapid growth in the numbers of the urban poor has made international organizations, like the Department of International Development, express their concern in 2003. They projected that if urban population growth persists at the current rate, more than 67% of the poor in Latin America, East and Central Europe, and Central Asia will be living in urban areas by 2025. They also predicted that more than one-third, up to as many as half, of the poor in Africa and Asia will be living in urban areas by that year.
Property rights is the third transition, according to Jones (2003). This develops as a political, economic and social issue directly from the repopulation of most urban areas with poor, desperate, rural migrants in Jonesâ (2003) transitions 1 and 2. The unholy trinity of Urbanization, Poverty and Slums, are closely related and have thus gained paramount importance as the issue of discussion on development in academic and development fields.
Bangladesh, too, has been experiencing the sort of âhastyâ urbanization and resultant problems of urban poverty and slumification of cities described earlier. Continuous and relentless movement of people from rural areas to cities in larger numbers has branded Bangladesh as one of the most urbanized countries in Asia. Yet, while this process occurred in Europe over a period of 300 years, it has, as in most other developing countries, happened in Bangladesh in a single generation. The rapid urbanization is creating enormous pressure on cities, thus, aggravating urban poverty. The increasing numbers of the urban poor are posing a serious challenge to the cities in terms of providing an acceptable quality of housing (Panday 2017). There are, increasingly, two classes of housing in the urban areas of Bangladesh, as in other developing countries: state-of-the-art houses for the successful and poorly serviced slums for everyone else. Thus, the issues of urbanization, urban poverty and slum development are closely related.
In the existing literature, there is no comprehensive work that has shed light on the issues of urbanization, urban poverty and slum development in Bangladesh. Thus, intending to fill this gap, this book discusses these three concepts in a single frame. The book aims to provide a clear understanding of the relationship among these interrelated issues in Bangladesh: (1) what is the theoretical linkage between urbanization, urban poverty and slum development; (2) what is the relationship between slum formation and slum upgrading initiatives; (3) how has the issue of urban slum development has been addressed globally; (4) what are the major urban slum-upgrading practices in Bangladesh and (5) what are the major challenges for slum development initiatives in Bangladesh and how can they be resolved? The book is mainly based on the analysis of secondary materials.
Urbanization, Urban Poverty and Slum Development: An Analysis of Their Interrelationship in Bangladesh
As stated earlier , urbanization is one of the most talked-about development issues in the modern development discourse. One of the most serious manifestations of urbanization is the rapid increase of urban poverty in these countries. On the other hand, urban growth, or urbanization, and urban poverty have proliferated with the growth of slums and squatter settlements in most developing countries. The enormity of the issue is not a new phenomenon in development literature.
For instance, UN-HABITAT (2003a), in its global slum assessment report, mentioned that 32% of the worldâs population (which was around 924 million in 2003) was living in slums, while in developing countries, 43% was living in slums. At least, the awareness of the problem dates back to the beginning of this century.
Living conditions in these slums are awful and they also damage the environment. Common descriptions of slums include lack of water supply, unhygienic sanitation facilities, congested and ramshackle habitation, perilous location and anxiety over tenure, among other kinds of social and economic deprivation. The proliferation of substandard living conditions gave rise to Target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that made a commitment to substantially upgrade living conditions for the 100 million people who, it was estimated, would be living in slums by the year 2020 (UN-HABITAT 2003b).
McGranahan and Martine (2014) stated that the hasty growth of the slum communities, drawing poor people in from the rural areas, has made urban poverty a serious challenge for many of the developing societies. Thus, migration-induced urban poverty has manifested in inadequate and irregular incomes, which define urban poverty in most developing countries. The problem is that the urban economy is informal and irregular, while the costs of living of the poor who live and work in it are fixed and rising. Low-income people, trying to live âthe city lifeâ buy necessities at the same prices as do the rich, but do not have equivalent or regular incomes.
Yet income cannot be considered the only indicator of urban poverty. Housing conditions, even for slum dwellers who earn middle-class incomes, but not enough to leave the slums, also need to be considered. This is because, increasingly in developing countries, cities are becoming places of modern state-of-the-art accommodation surrounded by teeming slums. Thus, a slum dweller who improves his or her income has nowhere to go unless he or she can jump the middle class into true wealth. More than a billion urban people are compelled to stay in overcrowded hovels with no legal rights to the land on which they sleep. Worse, the people living in these illegal hovels do not get access to public services in the form of roads, drainage, potable water and sewerage health, education, police or emergency services (Tacoli 2017). Along with their other sufferings, slum dwellers can never feel secure because they are liable to attack by criminals, landlords and the local or central government that wants to clear the slums (Satterthwaite 2003).
People staying in these illegal houses also have to contend with the threat of crime, violence and insecurity, lack of access to credit and absence of voting rights. Access to these non-income facilities requires legal status with official land tenure documents to prove it, which these people do not have. Thus, they pay...