Adequate, easy, and equitable access to urban facilities is a fundamental human right. To ensure adequate access to urban facilities, it is paramount important to urban planners to achieve equity in the distribution of such facilities. This study thus attempts to measure an integrated spatial accessibility measurement framework that contributes to the evaluation of geographic variation of spatial accessibility to urban facilities in Dhaka city corporation (DCC). This study measures integrated spatial accessibility index for urban facilities using GIS based techniques network analysis, spatial join, and summarize incorporating supply and demand for urban facilities, the travel distance or time that users are willing to cover to reach such facilities, and the interaction of residents across geographic boundaries. The obtained results indicate that there exist a variation in spatial accessibility to urban facilities. The central part of DCC area (16 wards) was found to retain higher spatial accessibility to urban facilities while the periphery was mostly covered by the wards (50 wards) with low spatial accessibility scores. Urban facilities are distributed in such a way that three-fourth of total population have low spatial access to those facilities. Modelling results implicate these areas should get more priority in allocating particular types of urban facilities in future. Research findings of this study could be a useful reference to help urban planners to analyze, investigate, and adjust the distribution of urban facilities in a more equitable manner.

Sustainability of transport system depends on a range of services and impacts produced by transport which can be indicated by several factors like mode choice, affordability, equity, accessibility, pollution, safety and efficiency. To address the increasing congestion problem and demand of mobility carsharing service was introduced in urban areas through focusing sustainability. Uber is a ridesharing service catered for an easy, comfortable, and convenient urban travel experience. It was launched in Dhaka in 2016. As a new alternative mode is available to the city dwellers, many of them are using it. The study intended to identify the Uber users as well as to understand their use pattern and preferences from sustainability perspective. For this study data were collected through in person questionnaire survey of Uber users at several potential points of users by random sampling method. The study has used descriptive approaches to investigate the issues. Results show that Uber is mostly used by the people of middle to high income younger age group due to its better accessibility and safety. Due to higher fare structure low to middle income people can not avail this service which is a negative point for Uber as far as sustainability is concerned. Uber trips are found most likely to be shifted from CNG and Taxi. Uber has no impact to change private car ownership status and car use. In some cases Uber has diverted trips from non-motorized modes. It is clear from the observation of this study that Uber is providing service to a particular segment of the population with less sustainability concern of urban transport in Dhaka.

About 60% of the trips are made on foot in Dhaka city but the pedestrians are the most vulnerable group among the road users. It is identified that more than 48% of reported road accidents and 72% of reported fatalities were pedestrians in Dhaka Metropolitan City. Among them, a large percentage of pedestrian crashes occurred in the intersection area. This study attempted to analyse the existing scenario of three accident-prone intersections of Dhaka city- Sonargaon-Panthapath, Jatrabari, and Shapla Chattar and redesign the intersections to ensure pedestrian safety. For the study, geographic elements were analysed and traffic studies were conducted for both vehicles and pedestrians of the intersections. Each of the legs of the intersections was incorporated in the study to know about the actual existing traffic scenario and problems of the intersections. After that, opinions of the stakeholders were collected regarding the redesign of the intersection. It was found that the geographical condition of the intersections was very poor. Sidewalks and roadways were mainly occupied by illegal hawkers, illegal parking, ticket counters. Besides, the roundabouts and central islands were not well-designed to control the vehicular and pedestrian traffic. So, these three intersections were redesigned by considering their land use, traffic flow, surroundings and the available standards. Overall pedestrian safety is expected to improve at those intersections if the proposed design is implemented.

The popularization of sustainable development has contributed to the promotion of the urban compactness idea. Since the 1990s, research has generally led to the advocacy of cities that are spatially compact, with a mix of uses. Dhaka has been dealing with some burning issues mainly related to land use management, which gives rise to the shortage of livable space along with environmental degradation and economic instability. Sustainable land use management requires proper study of existing spatial structures. Majority of the previous research focused on indicators that measured compactness or the sprawling nature of urban area at City or Metropolitan scale. This research has quantified neighborhood level spatial structures to study the compactness of the development. For measuring the spatial distribution of the development, the study has taken five variables-density in terms of floor use, residential to employment ratio, the percentage of the built-up area by buildings, the degree of equal distribution measured by Gini Coefficient, and the degree of clustering measured by Moran's I Coefficient. In the case of spatial structure, the Gini represents the degree to which the distribution of the development is concentrated or dispersed over the urban area while Moran's I will measure the degree of clustering or the three-dimensional pattern of the development. Each of the studied neighborhoods (ward) has been divided into 100*100 square grid cells which defines the sub-area for analysis, where each grid cell contains the information of total floor space available for residential and employment use used as a proxy variable of the population. The study found that residential spaces in the wards have more even distribution, with more continuous or random scattering behavior, while employment spaces are clustered in a few sub areas producing monocentric urban form in Neighborhood scale. The study focused mainly on two wards, similar study covering all the wards would give the spatial structure of the whole city, which will be the ultimate need of the policymakers or planners to prepare better land use control plans as well as land use development plans.

A liveable environment is the right of all human beings as well as all other beings. Parks and Greenspaces provide that for us. Khulna city is a rapidly growing city and the parks and open green space are not sufficient for the people living there. Khulna is the third-largest city in Bangladesh having a population of 1.4 million (BBS, 2011). According to Bangladesh Government’s Standard, the minimum land requirement for a park has been set to 1.5 acres per 10000 people. (GoB, 2004) To maintain that standard, Khulna City needs at least 210 acres of park and open space but only has 54.0 acres. (Islam, W. et al. 2012) So, existing parks are not sufficient for fulfilling the minimum govt. the standard for parks. Additional parks are required to fulfill the need. In the Open space proposal (Chapter 8) of KDA Master Plan 2001-2020, a total of 2008.00 acres of open space was proposed in which 234.70 acres of land was proposed for Metropolitan and Community Level Parks in total KDA jurisdiction area including Khulna City but most of them are not yet implemented. (KDA, 2001) It may not be possible to fulfill all the demands for parks and open spaces at a time but this study intended to find out a suitable site for a park in Khulna city to help to minimize the problem to some extent.

In this study, we establish a correlation between GA-based optimization of green spaces and air pollution reduction thereby presenting the contribution of greeneries in lessening air pollution. In this context, we first used the grid-wise spatial distribution of CO2 in Dhaka city using geographic information systems (GIS). Then, assess how many different sizes of trees are required to plant optimally in multi-variant green space locations obtained from genetic algorithms (GA)-based heuristic optimization. Next, we quantify carbon reduction capacity of different sizes of trees considering basal area of trees and standing woody biomass. Carbon sequestration has shown to vary significantly with the types of green spaces. More predominant effect was found with local parks. We found that different sizes of trees in optimal multi-variant green spaces could sequestrate up to 1,745,848 ton of carbon per year. In addition, we emphasized from GA-based sitting of green spaces that indeed adequate and optimal locations of green spaces in an urban setting can effectively reduce air pollution.

The level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission in Bangladesh is very low compared to other countries of the world but it is appallingly affected by the vulnerability of climate change. The emission of GHG from Bangladesh was 126.6 MtCO 2 eq (metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent per capita) in 2010 which accounted to 0 .3% of global total GHG emission. This study aims to identify the sources of GHGs from agriculture, forestry and livestock sector in Bangladesh and proposes some ideas to mitigate emission from these sources. Emission from flooded rice fields, enteric fermentation, manure management, burning of agriculture residues, biomass burning are some imperative sources of GHGs. The actions for mitigating GHG emission involve midseason drainage, off-season incorporation of rice straw, substituting urea with ammonium sulphate, replacement of roughage with concentrated feed, use of dome digester, tillage and residue management, practice of bio-fuel instead of fossil-fuels, high efficiency fertilizer application and artificial and participatory woodlot plantation. The proposals prefer bottom-up approaches incorporating all possible stakeholders and intend to reduce substantial quantity of GHGs from the specified sectors.

This study addresses both qualitative and quantitative assessments of the quality of major parks of Dhaka. Four incommensurate factors namely environment, safety and security, landscape and aesthetic factors have been smartly chosen to measure the quality of the parks by formulating new index values. Index value of each factor has been calculated for all the parks. It is shown that the quality of all the parks considered are dispersed. In addition, investigation of universal accessibility of the parks and direct park user’s opinion has been accumulated to concretize the results. Based on the major findings of this study a number of recommendations have been provided for the improvement of the quality of parks in Dhaka city. Involvement of local community and establishment of office for the park authority inside the park can be helpful in the quality maintenance of the parks. The findings of this paper will enhance the existing knowledge of city planners a step forward with a-priori knowledge to ensure quality of parks in further city planning.

This paper addresses both quantitative and qualitative assessment of the relationship between the land surface temperatures (LST) and land cover (LC) changes in Dhaka Metro Area (DMA) using Landsat TM/ETM+ data over the period from 1989 to 2010. The LC map was prepared using supervised classification methods. On the other hand, using the calibration of spectral radiance and emissivity correction LST has been derived from the thermal band of Landsat TM/ETM+. To establish the relationship between LST and LC, GIS based spatial simulation has been conducted. The changing of LST is found to be directly correlated with LC transition. LST has shown to increase in areas with growing urban developments. In contrary, the amount of Vegetation (NDVI) is negatively correlated with LST. The trend of LST and LC transitions indicates that LST will be abruptly increased in near future. The urban LST maps, the analyses of thermal-land cover relationships and the spatial simulated results thus obtained could be used as strategies for quality improvement of urban environment and a smart solution to the reduction of Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

In this study, an advanced hybrid genetic algorithms is formulated and applied to the optimal location of high schools in a rural area of Bangladesh. The advanced hybrid algorithms consist of genetic algorithm and alternating location allocation algorithm. The model is applied to Nakhla Upazila (a sub-district area) of Bangladesh as a case study. First, the genetic algorithm is used to generate optimum locations of high schools and then coded with the traditional alternating location allocation heuristic thus avoiding very long computation time. Obtained simulation results indicate that existing high schools are not well distributed and they are far from residential areas. The developed hybrid algorithm based model successfully shows the best locations of high schools in the Nakhla Upazilla minimizing the total amount of travel distance from the different zones of Nakhla Upazila to the school sites and thus provide a safe travel for children. The results have an implication for a good urban planning in context of placing schools optimally within walking distance of a neighborhood The model thus developed can be applied by planners as a useful tool for any location analysis.

Housing problem is one of the most acute problems in the mega-city Dhaka. A recent study of Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) showed that house rent in the city has alarmingly increased to about 350 % during the last 22 years (1990–2012) while the increase was 15.83 % higher in 2011 than in 2010. As a result fixed income city dwellers comprising both middle and lower middle class households are in great trouble to tackle the real-world problem of house rent in the city. This research thus conducted an extensive study to find the potential factors affecting the house rent by investigating relationship of increasing house rent with a number of important factors namely zonal variations of external appearance of the buildings, surrounding land use type, road distance from house, availability of open space, presence of utility facilities, type of structure, total number of flats, and average area of each unit flat are considered. A survey of 360 different areas on ten different zones of Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) area is conducted. Using the proposed prioritizing factors through weighted index method, it has been found that owners consider size of the unit as the main factor of determining the house rent. Social status plays the least role before determining the house rent. Increase of house rent in different interval of time has no relation with the distance from the main roads. Rather structures being distant from main road increase higher rent. Increase in price of utility services and daily necessary commodities are the prime reasons behind the house rent increase. Owners claim that house rent increase become a must when there is an increase in price of water supply, gas etc. Owners of the apartment mainly increase the house rent for their own accountability. Presence of house owner organization may reduce the abrupt and irregular increase of house rent. Building and structural condition is found to be the most influential factor for hiring residence in Dhaka city for the tenants. Accessibility and mobility along with social and community facilities are the next two criteria for choosing the residence. Accessibility is one of the most important factors for incensement of house rent. Safety and security, Proximity of educational institutions and social status also plays important role in this context. Though traditionally road distance and structure types are considered as the major factors determining the house rent, in contrary other factors namely size of the unit and presence of utility services are found to be the most dominant factors.

In this paper, a model of green urbanism (GU) incorporating the concept of planting of trees and greeneries has been proposed. The GU model mainly attempts to address challenges encountered by dynamically changing cities around the globe due to the reduced number of urban greeneries transforming into built-up areas. A framework has been designed to develop a greenery-based conceptual model (GBCM) towards attaining sustainable healthy livable (SHL) environment. The model is discussed in terms of greenery-based urban strategies and methodologies to deal with the social and economic contexts particularly in Dhaka city. In this context, we first revisit the present state-of-the-art of greeneries in Dhaka, then examine whether Dhaka a SHL-city and finally, an attempt has been taken to revive GU in Dhaka to bring a sustainable healthy environment. The model has reconfirmed that greeneries are the roots of adopting green urbanism which could bring a number of fundamental environmental benefits including reduction in energy use, pollution, waste generation, emission of greenhouse gas, impacts on climate and occurrence of natural disasters etc. The model thus developed has an implication on how city planners can adapt a priori approach to ensure sustainable health of populations combating unprecedented social, economic and environmental challenges that make cities unsustainable, unhealthy, and unlivable (3U-cities) due to insufficient greeneries.

In this paper, we present a new multi-objective location model for urban parks and open spaces (POSs) planning. We developed a Genetic Algorithm (GA) based multi-objective optimization model (GAMOOM) to derive optimum locations of POSs by considering four incommensurable objectives with the provision of POSs near: 1) densely populated areas, 2) air polluted areas, 3) noisy areas, and 4) areas without open spaces. The success of the model is presented through its application as a case study on Dhaka City. Obtained results indicate that the model can successfully provide optimum location of required POSs. The findings from this study also signify that optimum location of POSs obtained by utilizing only the second objective is substantially different than that of others. Moreover, there is also difference in optimum location of POSs by taking into account only the third objective when compared with others. Therefore, considering single objective cannot give optimum results for good POSs planning. So, it is verified that POSs should be planned by optimizing multiple objectives instead of single objective. The outcome of this multi-objective GAMOOM model does have an implication on how POSs should be designed and managed by the planning authority for not only sustainable environment but also better quality of life in a city.

In response to the increased rate of urbanization, RAJUK (Rajdhani Unnnayan Kartripakkhya), a capital development authority in Bangladesh, initiated a project adopting the state-of-the-art spatial approach to growth as a strategy in its capacity as the executive body responsible for the preparation and implementation of the Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (DMDP). In recognition of the importance of the plan and in order to increase its implementability, public participation was considered one of the most significant features in the DMDP. Further, public participation was considered an inevitable part of the consideration of planning standards, including recommendations at each stage from Structure Plan (SP) to Detail Area Plan (DAP). By nature urban planning is a complex mix of socio-economic and political phenomena which involves many theoretical aspects and at the same time there are associated multifaceted factors in its implementation. In the past there have been many efforts at planning and managing the urban areas in Dhaka, yet in most cases these efforts were focused on planning without consideration of the rapid changes taking place in socioeconomic contexts, the strength and capacity of the public agencies concerned, or of the resources required. This paper is an assessment of the extent of inclusion of the public voice in the form of participation in the DAP, which is a reality on the ground. The DAP is an ongoing project, and based on a survey and interviews in the field this paper is an endeavour to identify the differences between theoretical practices as outlined in the DMDP and the actual situation.