Rural settlements dynamics and the prospects of densification strategy in rural Bangladesh

Abstract

Given the year on year decrease of rural farmland and various forms of land degradation through the intrusion of non-farm land uses, the government of Bangladesh has drafted the agrarian reform strategies, primarily to protect the agricultural land from encroachment, conversion, and indiscriminate use. The draft Agricultural Land Protection and Land Use Bill since its inception in 2011 is facing serious uncertainties of implementation due to its borrowed nature from the developed contexts and inadequacy to recognize the local complexities. With a particular focus on the densification component of the draft bill, a semester-long design studio was conducted in consultation with the existing villagers to explore the practicability of the draft bill in the villages of Tetultala and Chhoygharia in the south-western coastal Bangladesh. The findings from the two villages hint that in Bangladesh, the unique and evolving nature of rural settlements dynamics that are disintegrating the rural society from farming practices and the farmland, thereby, unsettling the traditional village-morphology. The settlements dynamics vary from those of the western context; hence, there is an emerging need to build locally situated knowledge towards a feasible rural land reform.

A Graph Neural Network (GNN) Algorithm for Constructing the Evolution Process of Rural Settlement Morphology

“…ere is a significant correlation and interaction between the external natural environmental factors represented by regional location and the economic and social development factors represented by farmers' per capita income. e natural environmental factors have a great influence on the evolution of the rural settlement form and last for a long time [6,7]. Due to the urbanization factors, the production and life of rural settlements are affected, which accelerates the evolution of the form and scale of rural settlements.…”

“…From the research status and future development trend of rural geography, some scholars in the United States and Britain analyzed the geography, history, and their relationship with rural settlement areas, and explored the relationship between rural settlement morphological structure adjustment, economic and social development, and landscape change in the industrial age [7,8]. In addition, some scholars have studied the relationship between the morphological structure of rural settlements and other adjacent disciplines.…”

GIS-based multi-criteria analysis modeling used to locate suitable sites for industries in suburban areas in Bangladesh to ensure the sustainability of agricultural lands

“…In Bangladesh, agricultural lands are mostly owned by small-scale farmers; thus, it is comparatively inexpensive and easy to convert land to non-agricultural purposes. Studies have also found that the land ownership size of a household and the non-agricultural occupation of heads of households were the two primary reasons for agricultural land transformation, resulting in declines in agrarian income and productivity (Quasem 2011 (Alam et al 2016). Although these historical land policies emphasize the conservation of agricultural lands and limit their transformation to non-farming purposes, they leave room for flexibility, which has caused the policies to be ineffective (LANDac 2016).…”

Expansion of Rural Settlements on High-Quality Arable Land in Tongzhou District in Beijing, China

“…Clearly, this development represents a serious threat to regional food security and sustainable development. It has been reported that urban expansion usually leads to the loss of high-quality arable land because the distribution of urban areas and high-quality arable land usually shares similar land conditions such as the flat terrain and having resources close to the water [2,4,11,12,23,38,39,42,44,45]. However, whether rural settlement expansion prefers to consume high-quality arable land is still not clear now.…”