Spatial dynamics of urbanization and refugees’ settlements: Case study evidence using mixed method

Abstract

Urbanization needs to conceptualize beyond the city boundaries by exploring complex and interconnected interdependencies in regional key driving factors that can have tele-coupling effects during sudden shocks. Massive refugee settlement has a robust inter-linkage to the spatial and socio-ecological dynamics in local, regional contexts in both global south and North Countries. This study aims to explore the spatial dimension of urbanization in a regional transition context focusing on the newly built refugee settlement in the south-eastern coastal area of Bangladesh. For locational proximity and comparatively easy escape from Myanmar after domestic conflicts, over one million Rohingya have settled in the rural/forest area in Cox’s Bazar. Analysis of openly available global data products from historical built-up expansion from 1975 to 2021 suggests that refugee settlements impact spatial development intensity and population density dimensions, which have a transition (rural-to-urban) of a greater regional scale than local urbanization. Although our results from the expert-based key informant interviews have a broad agreement with the quantitative findings; however, the environmental, socio-economic, and cultural impacts are more local than findings from the geospatial analysis. Therefore, the local development policies need an urgent adjustment to comply with the local and regional balances in the above factors, along with international development actors may also need attentive measures in the policy formulation. Further investigations in scenario-based urbanization dynamics are required to avoid an urban desert initiated in the absence or relocation of refugee settlement. Similar kinds of studies may also be replicated even in prosperous global north countries in order to conceptualize the spatial transformative process of rapid migration influx on urbanization with innovative open data in the absence of up-to-date official datasets and adoptions of mixed approaches including related actors and policymakers.