A Negotiation of Socio-Spatial Vectors in Urban-Rural Continuum of Homesteads in Bangladesh

Abstract

Households negotiate for diverse purposes within the realm of their domestic spaces and homesteads located in the urban-rural housing continuum. This negotiation depends on the different socio-spatial aspects like livelihood pattern, domestic space organization and use, homestead type, affordability as well as ecological resilience and climatic vulnerabilities in both areas. In today's global scenario, the market economy and power relations have extended a country's rural domain into the urban and urban into the global. The impacts of these transformations in the inter-connected spatial domains of the rural and urban continuum are manifested both in the tangible physical and intangible social aspects while challenges are encountered affecting the living and livelihood of people. To encounter some of the ramifications, negotiation between the spatial and social vectors play an important role as a decisive factor regarding the extent of adequate living conditions, residential satisfaction and resilience. Most research efforts, to date, regarding policy and programmes in the housing and settlement sector have been dominated by vectors of the demographic, economic and physical data. The social insights are either almost ignored or even if individually addressed the negotiating aspects. are not analyzed to get a resultant vector. In this paper, an effort has been made to provide an altemative perspective of investigating households and homesteads, both in the rural and urban continuum, grounded in the negotiating vectors of socio-spatial aspects. The investigation has focused on some case studies along with secondary resources to understand how people negotiate with the challenges and the adverse impacts of changing scenarios of space and society to address community resilience reflecting ideas of indigenous knowledge and practices.