Managing the Urban Environment in Dhaka, Bangladesh

This article brings the contemporary thinking and practice of Urban Environmental Management to the solution of current and persistent environmental problems of Dhaka, the capital and largest city of Bangladesh. A megacity with a population of 10.4 million in 2024, and a metropolitan region of over 23.9 million people (Ferreira, 2022; World Population Review, 2024), it is widely considered to be the most densely populated built-up urban area in the world. Dhaka is an important cultural, economic, and scientific hub of Eastern South Asia, is an important majority Muslim city, and is the largest Bengali-speaking city in the world and is the world’s 6th largest city (Dhaka Tribune, 2023). Its GDP ranks 39th worldwide. Nevertheless, it is plagued by overt and serious environmental problems of widespread slum housing, poor air quality, transportation congestion, water pollution and inadequate sewage and sanitation infrastructure among them. The article first considers the context of the city, and then reviews the key issues of poverty alleviation, industry, energy, transportation, wastewater and solid waste, water management and finance. Finally, it proposes a 5-year plan to help alleviate the city’s urban environmental problems by utilizing a real-world database and working within the financial institutions of Bangladesh.