Urbanization in South Asia is expanding rapidly as increasing numbers of people migrate to towns and cities in search of economic opportunity.

The World Bank is looking for support in policy reform in critical areas such as land cover planning and municipal finance, as well as institutional reform to support designing programs to address slums, housing and urban infrastructure requirements.

Meeting the needs of soaring urban populations is and will therefore continue to be a strategic policy issue, both for the World Bank and South Asia region countries.

Very high resolution satellite data with spatial resolution of 0,5m and 0,8m was used to extract Land Cover with 1ha MMU.

A segment of the Land cover status product.

Results

Structure of urban classes in years 2001 and 2013 (100% = Total urban area for given year). Significant differences in structure of urban Land Cover classes as compared between AOIs and reference years.

Significantly different proportions of continuous and discontinuous urban fabric between 2001 and 2013 were detected in Chittagong. In Jalalabad increase of share of construction sites is apparent. Extraordinarily large proportion of construction sites compared to other cities is present in Karachi in both horizons.