Exploring the Nature of Urban Structure of Urban Areas in Bangladesh

The study of spatial structure of a city always fascinates urban planners. City’s spatial structure can assist urban planners to predict future development trend and help them to develop appropriate strategies to guide the current spatial structures. But, there is no such type of previous studies of the city structure in Bangladesh. In this study, the researchers made an attempt to find out spatial structure of cities in Bangladesh. Using spatial distribution of population and land use the researchers tried to explain the present scenario in Bangladesh. The researchers have found that for most of the cases there is a density gradient, which represents relationship between population density and distance from city centre to periphery, with high R square value follows a negatively sloped exponential curve from city centre to periphery of an urban area except in Barisal City Corporation (BCC). The density is high at the centre and it gradually decreases towards periphery. The Central Business District (CBD) of BCC is relatively larger than other municipalities/ paurashavas where commercial land use is dominant type of land uses. People are living outside the CBD due to high concentration of commercial and institutional land uses in the centre is the main reason of positively sloped exponential curve for BCC. The first important finding from land use analysis is that in most of the Paurashavas, there is a CBD which have been developed alongside a river network and newly developed commercial land uses have taken place along the major highway in that area. The study also showed that after three kilometers from the city center, agriculture is dominant type of land uses although there is a high rate of urbanization in Bangladesh. The researchers as urban planners conclude that, there is natural tendency of compactness in Bangladesh which should be encouraged.