Proceedings of the 2 nd International Conference on Civil Engineering for Sustainable Development (ICCESD-2014), 14~16 February 2014, KUET, Khulna, Bangladesh, ISBN: 978-984-33-6373-2 (CD-Rom) URBANIZATION AND SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES IN DHAKA CITY, BANGLADESH Muhammad Abdullah* 1,3 , Sushil Kumar Das 2 and Oyama Tatsuo 3 1 Assistant Postmaster General, Head Post Office,Sylhet, Bangladesh, e-mail: mabdullahapmg@yahoo.com 2 College of Engineering and Science, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia, e-mail: sushildaso6@yahoo.com 3 National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo, Japan, e-mail: oyamat@grips.ac.jp ABSTRACT Like other developing countries, urbanization in Bangladesh is a growing phenomenon, which is steady in nature but fretfully affects urban sustainability. Despite urban authorities are concerned about this issue, they often fail to assess the problems due to the fact of uncontrollable and unpredictable rural to urban migration, and negligence of urban poors sustainable living and access to basic services. This paper tries to embrace the issues of urban population growth and consequential challenges of urban sustainability focusing on solid waste managemetn in Dhaka city. This paper is prepared by a qualitative methodology based on secondary data which were collected from different published and unpublished documents, relevant research articles and books. This study indicates the inadequacy of infrastructural services and basic amenities; environmental degradation; traffic jam and accidents; violence and socio-economic insecurity are the major challenges for Dhaka city which are created through rapid urbanization. One of the direct consequences of urbanization of Dhaka city is the increase in solid waste generation, placing a serious threat to the natural resources, and consequently holding back sustainable development. The paper finally concludes providing some strategies that might be helpful to the policy makers in formulating development policies for sustainable urban services. Keywords: Urbanization, sustainability, good governance, solid waste, Dhaka city 1. INTRODUCTION Urbanization is now a global phenomenon. The worlds urban population reached 2.9 billion in 2000 and is expected to rise to 5 billion by 2030. A great rural-to-urban demographic shift taking place throughout the world is fuelling this urban growth. As a result, the proportion between urban and rural population is steadily tilting towards urban. Only 29% of the worlds population lived in urban areas in 1950; this proportion is increased to 47% by 2000, and projected to account for 61% by 2030 (UN, 2004). The overwhelming population growth in urban areas is a complex product of pull and push factors (Savage, 2006). Urbanization, generally, refers to an increasing shift from agrarian to industrial services and distributive occupations (Mandal, 2000). These services and occupational opportunities as a full factor offer many people to migrate to urban areas from rural areas being stimulated by push factors like natural disasters, economic stagnant, and poverty. Dhaliwal (2000) notes these trends in developing countries as a substantial difference from euro-American industrial urbanization. In the context of developing countries, this kind of urbanization processes a dualistic nature of opportunities as well as challenges. Therefore, cities have both positive and negative dimensions. Positively, it is center place of modernization and communication, and engine of a countrys economic development. Moreover, cities are the agglomeration of the riches, economic activities, and modern technological advancement and opportunities (Kleniewski, 2006). On the contrary, cities, particularly in developing countries, are now very vulnerable places to live and enjoy quality of life because of environmental problems, rapid growth of urban poor, and terrorism. Many argue that urbanization does not reduce poverty, rather it gives to rise to enormous problems and challenges (Nazem, 2001). However, the world is gradually going to be completely urbanized. Already, more than half of the people live in urban areas. Various reports suggest that the cities of developing countries, particularly, will be facing tremendous challenges of the unpredictable and uncontrollable urbanization which may generate a huge suffering to the people. In Bangladesh, this situation might be more dangerous while overwhelming rural-urban migration is uncontrollable, good governance is rare, and unequal resources distribution is explicitly visible. For example, the urban poor in the city and their informal living in precarious settlements is a big issue of sustainable urban development. Despite the authorities are concerned about this issue, they neglect it in the name of limitation of resources, urban poors entitlement in the city, and administrative and political difficulties. Therefore, the trend of present urbanization and lacking in good governance pose huge challenges to the future of sustainable city.