Manoj Roy

This chapter tells the stories of two ordinary, hardworking, and (initially) poor microeconomic agents – Harun and Selina of Dhaka. They are the implementers of a comprehensive and far-reaching set of practices for solving problems of poverty, housing, and basic services. They saved whatever and whenever possible, investing that (savings) in (land) assets, spreading it across city-to-hinterland before pulling that all to reinvest in human resources (exportable labour to Dubai), and opportunistically purchasing city land and building city homes. They drew upon many formal and informal supports, meaning they are hardly mavericks but exemplars of sensible, everyday microeconomic agents. In fast-growing megacities like Dhaka, where urban planning typically plays the role of development control rather than enablement, large chunks of the city are made bottom-up by people like Harun and Selina. We must critically evaluate the microeconomic agents’ ability to act and find ways to positively influence the multiple determinants that steer actions in one way or another.

Improving sanitation services in Sub-Saharan African cities remains a challenge. While the co-production approach is arguably the most promising, it is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Co-produced arrangements often emerge from micro-level grassroots initiatives, meso-scale experimentation producing scalable solutions, or political mandate-aligning initiatives at the macro-level. This paper examines three co-produced sanitation initiatives at these three levels in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It finds that co-produced solutions require being a ‘constructive alternative’ to existing municipal provisions to leverage porous bureaucracy, enhance political acceptance, and secure community buy-in. Scale jumping could occur top-down or bottom-up, but it takes time. The municipal government has an important role to play in the initiatives to flourish and strive to achieve scale.

Aim: This study investigated the microbial quality of food and water consumed by children in four slums in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, together with the associated risk factors.Methods: This cross‐sectional study took place from December 2015 to May 2016 and focused on 360 children under the age of five. We recorded household food security, namely adequate food for a healthy life, socio‐economic and nutritional status, hygiene and feeding practices. Food and water samples were analysed.Results: We found that 63% of the children were malnourished and 58% were stunted. Yeast and moulds were detected in 86% of the food samples and coliforms in 73%. All the water samples were contaminated with faecal coliforms, yeasts and moulds and Staphylococcus. Food insecurity affected 83% of households. Children were twice as likely to be malnourished if they were born with a perceived low birthweight or their mothers did not wash their hands with soap after cleaning the child's bottom following defecation. Exclusively breastfed children were less likely to develop malnutrition.Conclusion: Children from the Dhaka slums were frequently stunted and malnourished and contaminated food and water was common. Integrated efforts are essential to create public awareness about hygiene.

Studies of urban metabolism provide important insights for environmental management of cities, but are not widely used in planning practice due to a mismatch of data scale and coverage. This paper introduces the Spatial Allocation of Material Flow Analysis (SAMFA) model as a potential decision support tool aimed as a contribution to overcome some of these difficulties and describes its pilot use at the county level in the Republic of Ireland. The results suggest that SAMFA is capable of identifying hotspots of higher material and energy use to support targeted planning initiatives, while its ability to visualise different policy scenarios supports more effective multi-stakeholder engagement. The paper evaluates this pilot use and sets out how this model can act as an analytical platform for the industrial ecology–spatial planning nexus.

This paper examines patterns of adaptive behaviour in low-income settlements⁽¹⁾ in Khulna, Bangladesh’s third largest city. It contrasts the adaptive behaviours of “squatter” households who “own” their land with those of tenants who rent dwellings from private landlords, and finds significant differences between the adaptive behaviours of owners and renters. This is important, as most knowledge about low-income settlements in Bangladesh originates from “owned” settlements – often called “public settlements”, as the land is officially public land. But the future growth of low-income settlements in the country is likely to be increasingly on private land, with rented dwellings. Policy lessons generated from settlements with “squatters” may be inappropriate for the next generation of “slums” that will house millions of rural migrants and people displaced by climate change. The conclusions argue that agencies seeking to assist low-income households in Bangladesh will need to craft different strategies for settlements according to different types of land tenure.

In Bangladesh, urban poverty is neglected in research, policy and action on poverty reduction. This paper explores the underlying reasons for this relative neglect, which include national identity and image, the political economy of urban poverty and the structuring of knowledge creation. It argues for more comprehensive policy and programmes for the urban poor given Bangladesh’s increasingly urban future and the growing magnitude of urban poverty. The impact of climate change will accelerate Bangladesh’s ongoing urbanization as well as deepen the scale and severity of urban poverty. The fact that reducing urban poverty will be increasingly important in meeting national goals for poverty reduction means that policy and action must pay more attention to the urban poor. This is contingent upon two factors: first, a better understanding of the scale and nature of urban poverty and vulnerability; and second, the confrontation of powerful interests necessary to secure a national commitment to urban poverty reduction.