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THE urbanisation rate of Bangladesh or the migration of people from its rural to urban areas is occurring at a rate of five to six per cent annually and the projections are that more than 50 per cent of the people of this country will be living in the urban areas by the year 2025. Reportedly, an assessment made by the UNFPA recently projected that Dhaka would grow to become the world's fourth most populous city one and a half decades from now.
The more mature an economy, the greater its urbanisation. The worldwide trend is migration of people from rural to the urban areas. Bangladesh is experiencing nothing different from this trend. The advanced economies of the world today have very small segments of their population living in the rural areas. The majority of the people in those countries are found hugely concentrated in cities although their population used to be concentrated mainly in rural areas-like in Bangladesh today-about a century ago. Thus, urbanisation marks economic transformation and progress of traditional societies toward modern ones.
Bangladesh should look at urbanisation more as a challenge and not as a problem to be reversed or postponed. Keeping distinctly in view of the unavoidable urban future of the country, all planning must be structured to contribute to two basic objectives: planned growth of cities to take care of the environmental, economic and social needs of all sections of people and expansion of services, opportunities and facilities especially for the urban poor.
On the one hand, regulations and their enforcement must be very thorough and unsparing so that none can attempt anything violating the goals of planned urbanisation. On the other hand, much increased and sustained delivery of various utility services will have to be ensured among the urban poor as well as the creation of the widest possible socio-economic opportunities for them.
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