Growing slums of Dhaka

Growth of Slums in Dhaka Metropolitan Area in the last ten years has been nothing less than immense and spectacular. Using 1996 as the base year, the slum population in DMA was 1.5 million in 3007 clusters out of a total DMA population of 5.5 million. In 2005 the slum population has grown to 3.4 million in out of a total DMA population of 9.13 million. While the overall population in the same geographical area of 360 km is growing at the rate of 4.5 percent to 5.0 percent, the slum population is growing at the rate of more than 10 percent year on year. No matter what, the trend is very clear that the population and the percentage of slum population in Dhaka Metropolitan Area is growing much faster than the overall population and will continue to be in the foreseeable future. It will be nearly impossible to increase density of habitation on single storey structures. In future, the slums will have to be in multistoried structures !