Purpose: This paper addresses housing problems of coastal areas in Bangladesh and investigates container-modular-housing (CMH) as a potential sustainable solution that establishes a resilient community.Design/methodology/approach: Primary data highlight the underlying challenges of coastal-housing developed by monitoring the day-to-day operations of the community and conducting interviews with community members. Secondary data came from existing literature on coastal-housing rules and regulations, CMH and similar ideas. The study used a hypothetical CMH cluster design, with three primary objectives in mind: future settlement re-arrangement, economic sustainability and environmental sustainability. To achieve the objectives, the research used a comparative examination of the current constructed form and CMH, as well as a computer-aided simulation approach.Findings: Primary findings encompass issues of a given coastal area, including surrounding site studies, sustainability and resiliency demands due to broad exposure to the natural calamities. Driving toward a “CMH” based home design has the ability to create strategies for a resilient and sustainable community development while taking three primary objectives into account.Research limitations/implications: A pilot project is needed to analyze the socio-cultural impact and overall construction feasibility.Practical implications: This research could be implemented to transform an informal construction system into a technical, resilient, sustainable architectural and engineering solution to build resilient communities.Originality/value: Numerous research projects have focused on the environmental sustainability of CMH. However, this study focuses on construction sustainability considering three major aspects which are yet to be addressed.

Rapid urbanization is reshaping land surface conditions and local thermal environments in fast-growing coastal cities. This study examines how Land Use Land Cover (LULC) transformation influenced seasonal land surface temperature (LST) dynamics in Chattogram City Corporation (CCC), Bangladesh, over 2004–2024. Multi-temporal Landsat imagery was analyzed using a Random Forest classifier, and spectral indices (NDVI, NDBI, NDBaI, MNDWI) were derived to characterize surface biophysical conditions. Built-up land expanded by 27.71 km², largely replacing agricultural and vegetated areas. Summer mean LST rose from 36.08 °C to 36.50 °C, while winter LST rose from 25.25 °C to 26.97 °C. Only the winter warming trend is statistically significant; the summer change falls within the ±1–2 °C retrieval uncertainty of Landsat-derived LST. The summer–winter thermal gap consequently narrowed from 10.83 °C to 9.53 °C, indicating that urbanization-driven warming in this tropical coastal city is disproportionately concentrated in the cool dry season. Partial correlation and multiple regression analyses confirm that built-up intensity (NDBI) is the dominant driver of surface warming, while vegetation (NDVI) exerts a consistent cooling influence. Water bodies showed contrasting seasonal trends, with winter extent declining alongside a slight summer increase. These findings highlight the critical role of vegetation and water bodies in moderating urban heat and provide data-driven insights for climate-responsive planning in rapidly urbanizing coastal cities.