Following a UN report that ranked Dhaka the eleventh most populous city in the world, concern has arisen whether the city can sustain the 3.6 percent annual growth in population it is currently experiencing.
According to environmentalists and urban planning experts, Dhaka has already started feeling the heat of an overcrowded populace with traffic jam and water-logging becoming almost a routine problem.
The current population of 1.7 crore of Dhaka is already deprived of basic facilities like housing, healthcare, electricity and clean water, said eminent urban planner Prof Jamilur Reza Choudhury.
"If the population continues to increase, residing in Dhaka would become unbearable," he told The Daily Star.
"The existing traffic and water-logging problems of the city show the fallout of the over-population," he added.
Environmentalist and Joint Secretary of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon Iqbal Habib forecast a bleak scenario in the capital, considering the density of its population.
He feared that clashes would occur among the Dhaka dwellers in future for access to city services.
Titled "World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014 Revision", the UN report projected Dhaka would become the 6th most crowded city by 2030 with a population of over 2.7 crore.
By 2050, the majority of the world's megacities will be in Asia, according to the report.
While cities of the developed world such as New York topped the chart of the most populous urban agglomerations six decades back, the current trend shows that low and lower-middle income countries are increasingly dominating the list.
Besides Dhaka, Congo's capital Kinshasa, India's Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Pakistan's Karachi and Philippines' Manila are now among the 30 most populous cities of the world.
The report found that just eight of the 30 largest cities were in countries that the World Bank defines as high income, The New York Times (NYT) reports.
The NYT quoted John R Wilmoth, director of the UN's population division, as saying that as people leave the countryside because of decreasing need for agricultural workers, the important question will be whether cities have an industrial economy that can provide jobs and an infrastructure that can allow the new residents to live in acceptable conditions.
He said that it was easier and less expensive to provide housing, health care, education, electricity and clean water services to urban residents than to a similar number of people living in rural areas. But, noting the slums surrounding some cities in poor countries, he added that it was much more difficult to accomplish that after those slums grow.
“It is much better if the planning takes place before they arrive,” he said. “Hopefully, this report is something of a wake-up call.”
Prof Jamilur Reza Choudhury believes that the population growth of the city should be checked through decentralisation and drawing up countrywide urban plans, instead of city-wise.
"Communications network also needs to be improved," he said, citing the example of Tokyo, currently the most populous urban agglomeration of the world.
The majority of Tokyo's population live outside and commute to the city every day for work, he said.
