Conversion Of Natural Landscape By Unplanned Urbanization: Study The Change Of Traditional Land-Water Interface In The Eastern Periphery Of Dhaka

Abstract

Dhaka, a low laying city in the world’s most extensive delta system, is rapidly grabbing its mandatory natural landscape into the built-up area. This deltaic city’s water resources once played an essential role in structuring settlement patterns and keeping the overall hydrological, ecological, and environmental equilibrium. Eastern Fringe, the crucial natural, spontaneous territory of the Dhaka Metropolitan Area (DMA) to prevent the city’s flooding problems and environmental degradation, is rapidly converting from traditional homestead to urbanised land. The city’s present development activities for this part and the entire city do not respect this profound geo-morphological nature of the territory or consider the traditional land-water relationship with the settlement. This paper will analyse the land-use conversion in the study area, focusing on the land-water interface to identify the natural landscaped change for the built-up area. The article will first elaborate on the study area's enriched land-water system and its local integration in the land-water interface. It will also explain the importance of natural land-water resources for the city’s hydro-ecological. Finally, through ArcGIS and Google Earth Image analysis, it will discover the rapid loss of natural land-water resources, its process of conversion and associated environmental degradation due to land-cover alteration in the focus area. This paper will give the importance to reinstall the traditional land-water relationship in the rapidly growing urban areas to check environmental degradation.