George Steinmetz

Thousands of homebound passengers waited to depart from Dhaka’s main ferry terminal last week before the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Most people in Dhaka migrated here from small rural towns, and return there for the big holidays. The world’s second-largest city struggles to keep up with urban migration, and river transport remains a slow but viable alternative to overcrowded roads and railcars.

Brick kilns run 24/7 along the Daleshwari River south of Dhaka. Some 25 billion bricks are made by hand here each year from river mud and placed in a zig-zag pattern inside coal-fired kilns. Bangladesh’s population is both stable and rapidly urbanizing, and Dhaka, the world’s second-largest city, is growing by about 4% per year. The kilns produce both the building blocks of this chaotic metropolis and about 40% of the air pollution during the dry winter months.