Abstract
The biggest challenge facing the impoverished urban communities in Bangladesh is their struggle to gain access to land. This chapter delves into the idea of land justice in urban Bangladesh by examining three research questions. First, why do impoverished individuals lack the legal right to use land in urban areas? Second, how do they face evictions from their homes and workplaces? Third, how do they fall prey to dispossession? Land justice, therefore, encompasses the understanding of three sociospatial injustices: the poor’s limited or complete lack of access to urban land, their insecurity regarding housing and employment, and their experiences of dispossession. This idea of land justice is built on the extant literature on spatial justice and land dispossession and a wide range of empirical evidence from Dhaka, Bangladesh. This research argues that the informal nexus of the state and market creates and sustains new urban governance to shape and reshape urban land politics, excluding the poor from their right to land and city, evicting them from their places, punishing them for using the land, and dispossessing them from their sociocultural networks. The chapter calls for seeking land justice by ending the sociospatial injustice in urban life.