BARCELONA — With its population of 45,000, the growing city of Singra in northwest Bangladesh isn’t as well-known as its larger peers — Dhaka, Bogra, and Sylhet. But as some development groups begin to laud the benefits of holding pilot projects in so-called “secondary cities,” Singra is now home to three development pilots, funded by donors including the World Bank, Korea International Cooperation Agency, and GIZ, the German agency for international development.
A secondary city is one with a population between 10-50 percent of the size of the country’s largest, which provides critical support functions for governance or transportation, and which may be a regional or state capital, according to the United States’ Department of State, which is co-leading an initiative to map them.
They are some of the fastest growing urban areas in lower-income countries, but up to now have “generally been poorly mapped with limited data and information on infrastructure, land tenure, and planning,” the department says.