Hope for the helpless: Unveiling the drivers of sense of community in cluster housing—Insights from nowdapara Guchchhogram, Ishwardi, a district-level city in northwestern Bangladesh

Climate-induced displacement has intensified the use of state-led resettlement housing as an urban environmental intervention across the Global South. While such programmes are typically evaluated using housing delivery and risk-reduction metrics, their socio-environmental consequences for everyday community life remain poorly understood—particularly in secondary cities. This study examines Sense of Community (SoC) as an emergent outcome of built–environment interactions within a government-developed climate-resettlement settlement in north-western Bangladesh. Using an explanatory single embedded case study of the Nowdapara Guchchhogram 1 (GG), the research adopts a mixed-methods approach that combines household surveys (n = 100), semi-structured interviews (n = 27), field observations, and statistical analyses in IBM SPSS version 21. Physical attributes of the built environment are analysed with respect to housing layout, pedestrian conditions, shared open spaces, and material performance. These are considered alongside psychological mediators operationalised as community attachment, social bonding, perceived ownership, and connectedness. The results indicate that physical design factors are not directly associated with SoC; instead, they appear to shape everyday socio-spatial practices that operate through psychological pathways, though causal claims require longitudinal validation. Community attachment and social bonding exert stronger direct influences on SoC than housing attributes alone, reframing SoC as a relational, socio-environmental outcome rather than a by-product of housing provision. The study advances scholarship on city–environment interaction by examining the potential relevance of everyday spatial experience to SoC within institutional arrangements shaping climate-resettlement, while underscoring the need to integrate pedestrian networks, shared spaces, and participatory management into resettlement policy to support sustainable community formation in secondary cities.