Measuring Dhaka’s Urban Transformation Using Nighttime Light Data

Cities are being restructured as a result of globalization, information flows, and changing economic processes. Global cities become command and control centers for subordinate production centers, resulting in the transformation of the mega-metropolitan system from monocentric to polycentric. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the urban transformation of the Dhaka region, Bangladesh. We estimated urban areas using remote sensing techniques and nighttime light data analysis. The urban areas were extracted from VIIRS nightlight datasets using ISODATA clustering algorithm. Urban areas were examined for two periods, from 2012 to 2017 and from 2017 to 2022. Apart from visual examination, the extracted urban areas were validated through the use of random sample points. Urban transformation was determined using hotspot analysis and the differentiation index for urban expansion. The finding is that Dhaka has continued to grow due to the continuous population growth and industrial centers’ proximity. Secondly, the majority of physical expansion of the Dhaka region occurs along major arterial highways and shows a functional intra-regional decentralization of industrial agglomeration.