(From previous issue)
Place of Origin of Migrants: Rural to urban migration takes place from almost all districts of Bangladesh, but some districts or areas are more prone to out-migration. A number of districts are common as migrant senders to the two largest cities Dhaka and Chittagong. These districts are Barisal, Comilla, Shariatpur, Chandpur, Barguna, Dhaka, Perojpur and Brahmanbaria. Other districts which act as source of rural urban migrations are Mymensinggh, Kishoreganj, Bhola, Comilla, Patuakhali, Madaripur, Jamalpur, Netrakona, Sherpur, Tangail, Barguna, Faridpur, Gaibandha, Jhalokathi etc. In addition to the push and pull factors, the intervening factor, i.e., distance between origin and destination, and the cost and risk of travel may explain the pattern to a large extent. Many of the source districts are also economically depressed areas, and vulnerable to natural disasters.
Who are the rural-urban migrants? Urban population in Bangladesh even today is composed predominantly of migrants from rural areas. Socio-economically, overwhelming majority of these migrants are the rural poor, although some are also from the rural non-poor or middle income households.
Migrants in Bangladesh cities have been traditionally from the young age group. In earlier days migrants used to be mostly male, but since the ’80s with growth of garment industries, women also have been coming to Dhaka and Chittagong in large numbers. A recent feature of migration is also family migration rather than only single person migration as in the past, although this characteristic still prevails.
Spatial/Regional Pattern of Urbanization: Case of Disparity:
Level of urbanization is defined as the proportion of urban population of the total population of a region or a country. Despite the fact that Bangladesh has a low level of urbanization for the country has a whole, there is significant variation in the level by districts (being 64 in total) or other geographic or administrative regions., like Divisions (7 seven) and Upazilas or (483 in 2010, BBS, 2011).
In fact, district-wise level of urbanization varies from as low as 8.85 percent in Gaibandha district to more than 93 percent in Dhaka district in 2011, a situation of gross disparity or imbalance.
Dhaka with a population of 11.20 million is the most urbanized district at 93 percent. [It may be interesting to note that Dhaka district has a population size which is more than double that of Singapore, and at least in statistical term, almost equally urbanized. However, the quality of urbanization in the two places are vastly different.] Other than Dhaka, the three other most urbanized districts are Narayangonj, Chittagong, and Khulna. Narayanganj is 66% urban, Chittagong 55% and Khulna just over 50%. Only three districts, Rajshahi, Khagrachari and Chuadanga have proportion of urban population between 31 and 50 percent and seven districts (Rangamati, Pabna, Barguna, Cox’s Bazar, Feni, Nawabgonj and Sylhet) had 21 to 30 percent of their population urban in 2011.
Fig-1 Level of Urbanization 2011, Based on BBS Data
Table 3: Distribution of Districts by Level of Urbanization, 2001
Most of the districts, 44 out of 64, have recorded low levels of urbanization, with only 11 to 20 percent of the population living in urban areas. There were three districts which had even less than 10 percent of the population urban. These districts are Panchagarh (9.86), Manikganj (9.28%) and Gaibandha (8.85%). While most of the low urbanized districts are located far from Dhaka, the most urbanized district, Manikganj with one of the lowest levels of urbanization is adjacent to Dhaka, a situation that demands deeper analysis.
Urbanization and Regional Economic Development: Urbanization worldwide has been found to be an effective engine of economic growth and socio-cultural development. In pure economic terms, urbanization contributes significantly to the national economy. Even in Bangladesh (at only 28 percent urban), this sector contributes (as we have mentioned earlier) to more than 65 percent of the national GDP. This has grown from as low as 25 percent in 1972-73 and 45 percent in 1995-96. There is an obvious co-relation between regional economic developments with level of urbanization.
Fig 2: Per capita GDP District, 2001, Based on BBS.
The districts with higher level of urbanization also happen to be economically more developed.
This trend obviously may lead one to conclude that urbanization on a macro-scale would be beneficial to the economy of Bangladesh. This co-relation between economic development level and urbanization level cannot be established quantitatively for the present time, due to non- availability of data on regional/district level GDP for recent years. While urbanization data by district is available for 2011, the latest district level GDP per-capita is available for only 2001. The relationship between the two indicators is highly positive (r2 being 0.8295). Urbanization also impacts social development in terms of higher literacy rate, improvement in the quality of education, and better health indicators. With greater urbanization, there are also benefits in cultural and political development. Dhaka district with the highest level of urbanization in the country also had the highest percapita Gross District Product, such as of $ 9,497 dollars in 2001, when the national GDP was $ 934 (BBS 2001).
Spatial Pattern of Urban Centres: Balanced by Overall Distribution, but not so by Size of Centres: Bangladesh has some 570 urban centres, of which one (Dhaka) is a megacity (population 14.70 m.), Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi and Sylhet are metropolitan areas, 25 urban centres are cities with population of over 100,000 each and the rest are smaller towns. There are 11 City Corporations and over 322 Pourashavas (Municipalities) administered under local governments. The other towns have the Union Parishad type of local government. Megacity Dhaka spreads over Dhaka and parts of 4 other districts covering an area of over 1400 km2.
Bangladesh has a fairly well balanced urban system in the sense that there is an urban centre for each and every region under the central government administrative authority. Most of the divisional (in other words, regional) cities are metropolitan cities, all 64 districts have a city or a town of reasonable size (varying from 50,000-400,000), and each of the old 460 Upazilas have at least one small town. The distribution of large and medium size cities and towns throughout the country offers reasonable access to urban services to most areas in the country including remote rural settlements.
Fig 3: Distribution of Urban Centres by Size: Based on BBS 2010
