The book Dhaka Megacity: Geospatial Perspectives on Urbanisation, Environment and Health presents the use of geospatial techniques to address a number of environmental issues, including land use change, climatic variability, urban sprawl, population density modelling, flooding, environmental health, water quality, energy resources, urban growth modelling, infectious diseases and the quality of life. Although the work is focused on the Megacity of Dhaka in Bangladesh, the techniques and methods that are used to research these issues can be utilized in any other areas where rapid population growth coupled with unplanned urbanization is leading to environmental degradation. The book is useful for people working in the area of Geospatial Science, Urban Geography, Environmental Management and International Development. Since the chapters in the book cover a range of environmental issues, this book describes useful tools for assisting informed decision making, particularly in developing countries.

The analysis of urban poverty has traditionally been dominated by economic approaches, often neglecting the social questions arising from poverty. This book seeks to redress the balance and is based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from different slums in Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Shahadat Hossain shows that the slum communities experience the highest level of poverty and marginality in the city. They remain very much dependent on their families and social networking in their struggle to adapt to urban life. This book will be invaluable for those working in the areas of urban studies, development studies, Asian studies, sociology and social policy studies.

Between 1991 and 2010, Dhaka’s population more than doubled to 15 million. Simultaneously, the city’s contribution to the national economy almost trebled. Clearly, population growth was accompanied by an unmistakable trend of economic growth, and a significant decline in urban poverty and income inequality. On the other hand, Dhaka’s high population density exacerbated serious environmental challenges, and it was soon ranked as one of the world’s least livable cities. In the context of these contradictory signals of rapid urbanization, Dhaka’s Changing Landscape sets to answer three most intriguing questions: Are the poorer segments of urban population, which migrate with dreams for better lives, benefitting from positive economic trends? Are these benefits sustainable? Are these benefits creating scope for this group to have a stake in the city’s growing prosperity? By studying 600 households and applying comparative analysis over a span of 20 years, the authors examine demographic and economic trends to understand the patterns, scale, and complexity of urban poverty, income inequality, and rural–urban migration. Going beyond the space and poverty debate, they enlighten the readers about the quality of life questions, sustainability matters, and gender and generational roles and relations necessary to understand qualitative transformation and migrants’ prospects for a better future.

This book provides a solid empirical portrait based on the complexities of demographic components of population change. It describes recent innovations, trends, challenges and solutions to population change and public policy issues, such as but not limited to immigration, gender discrimination in the labor market, student housing, teen pregnancy programs, smoking and alcohol consumption, and environment and self-rated health. As such it provides an interesting platform for academics, researchers, policy makers, and students to explore experiences and research findings on special topics in applied demography and how those inform the field of population studies and public policy.

Bangladesh is a large delta, where most people live in the overpopulated floodplains. Flooding is a normal phenomenon, which causes much suffering. How to reduce this suffering through better managing floods is a big societal challenge. To date, societal initiatives to address this challenge mainly consist of the construction of embankments along the river bank, to control hydrological processes and ‘discipline’ the river. Yet, such embankments generate their own hydrological and societal responses in sometimes unexpected ways. The study of these interactions and feedback mechanisms between hydrological and social processes is a new academic field, one that is particularly relevant in a dynamic delta such as Bangladesh. This research sets out to explore the phenomena, opportunities and risks generated by the interactions between physical and societal processes along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. It conceptualize these interactions as temporally dynamic and spatially diverse combinations of fighting and living with water. The research proposes the concept of "Socio-hydrological spaces (SHSs)" to enrich the study of socio-hydrology. A SHS is a geographical area in a landscape. Its particular combination of hydrological and social features gives rise to the emergence of distinct interactions and dynamics (patterns) between society and water. The SHSs concept suggests that the interactions between society and water are place-bound and specific because of differences in social processes, technological choices and opportunities, and hydrological dynamics. Through the concept of SHS, this research does not only contribute to advance the knowledge about socio-hydrological dynamics in Bangladesh, but also provides more general insights for flood risk management.

This double-volume work focuses on socio-demographics and the use of such data to support strategic resource management and planning initiatives. Papers go beyond explanations of methods, technique and traditional applications to explore new intersections in the dynamic relationship between the utilization and management of resources, and urban development. International authors explore numerous experiences, characteristics of development and decision-making influences from across Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as recounting examples from America and Africa. Papers propound techniques and methods used in geographical research such as support vector machines, socio-economic correlates and travel behaviour analysis. In this volume the contributions examine issues such as natural resource and environmental management, livelihoods issues in the context of climate change, land markets and land trusts, adaptive management of wildlife sanctuaries, ground water scarcity, flood hazards and flood plain management, non-conventional energy resources, community forestry and management and land use and land cover change. The significance of these topics lie in the pace and volume of change as is reflected through continued development within established fields of inquiry and the introduction of significantly new approaches during the last decade. Readers are invited to consider the dynamics of spatial expansion of urban areas and economic development, and to ex plore conceptual discussion of the innovations in and challenges on urbanization processes, urban spaces themselves and both resource management and environmental management. Together, the two volumes contribute to the interdisciplinary literature on regional resources and urban development by collating recent research with geography at its core. Scholars of urban geography, human geography, urbanism and sustainable development will be particularly interested in this book.