Dhaka Division
Bangladesh's primate city with 22 million people, densest major city on earth, producing 81.5% of export earnings.
Dhaka Division operates as the metabolic center of Bangladesh—home to 45 million people, generating roughly half of national GDP from 7% of the land area. Dhaka city itself grew from a Mughal provincial capital (founded 1608) to a megacity of 22 million, the densest major city on earth at 45,000 people per square kilometer. This concentration isn't accidental: the garment industry that employs 4 million workers clusters in Dhaka and surrounding industrial zones—Gazipur, Narayanganj, Savar—where factories produce 81.5% of Bangladesh's export earnings. The Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 killed 1,134 workers and exposed the safety failures that rapid industrialization created, triggering reforms that made Bangladeshi factories among the world's greenest (54 of the top 100 LEED-certified garment factories globally). The August 2024 revolution that overthrew Sheikh Hasina originated in Dhaka's universities, and the capital saw the most intense protests. Between August 2024 and July 2025, 245 factories closed affecting 100,000 workers—disruption concentrated where industry concentrated. The April 2025 Trump tariffs at 37% threaten an industry that has no alternative customers at scale. Dhaka's infrastructure strains under population pressure: traffic immobility, flooding during monsoons, air pollution ranking among the world's worst. The city spreads outward into agricultural land, consuming the hinterland that historically fed it. By 2026, Dhaka faces multiple pressures simultaneously—political transition, trade war exposure, climate vulnerability—with resilience that comes from sheer necessity rather than planning.