Unplanned urban sprawl is a worry

Kathmandu-valley city-development in ugly state of horizontal expansion

Bishnu Prasad Aryal
Kathmandu, June 18

Horizontal expansion of houses lacking minimum criteria of urbanisation in the Kathmandu valley has become a menace to healthy, safe and standard living. There is no good and specific plan on the urban development.

“Kathmandu is not an urban. It is just a gathering of people settled haphazardly in unmanaged and unplanned manner,” said Suman Neupane, general manager of Sunrise Bank at Gairidhara in Kathmandu. “Basic infrastructures such as easy roads, drinking water, systematic drainage, electricity and passages for fire fighters and emergency services are unavailable everywhere,” he added.

There is no parks, space and greenery in the valley, which has been losing environmental and aesthetic values day by day. It is developing not like a managed city but like a slum dwelling, said Er Devendra Dongol, senior planner at the Kathmandu Metropolitan City.

The Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MoPPW) estimated at about 600,000 houses in the valley and approximately 10,000 houses are being added every year in five municipalities and 45 town oriented VDCs. Houses are being built even in a small piece of land of 2.5 anas.

“The unmanaged, haphazard and unplanned growth with poor infrastructure and facilities has affected badly on ground-water recharge, management of drainage, drinking water, roads and electricity, environment among others,” said Dongol.

“I have my own house here but have booked a four-bedroom apartment of Rs 5 million at the Sun City Apartments for a good environment, security, free-land area and an ideal way of living with basic facilities,” said Neupane.

A few housing companies are focusing on high-class families only for commercial purposes. “There is no apartment made for poor, lower and middle class families in the valley,” said Dongol.

Er Hemnath Sharma Khanal, chief at the Kathmandu Valley Town Development Committee under the MoPPW, presented an instance of a low cost house of US$ 1,500 in Indonesia and said the government was yet to forge plans on it. “We are thinking of apartment system in the country,” he added. “It is a must to develop cities outside the Kathmandu valley too.”

Neupane said a master plan on a vertical development of the city was necessary to replace the old and unmanaged houses. “Government, as a facilitator to the private sector for better housing system, should identify areas for colonies and develop cities with the concepts of developed apartments and housings,” he added.

According to KMC, 30 per cent of the total area of 670sqkm in the Kathmandu valley is covered by the houses. “There is no alternative to the vertical development to manage the city,” said Neupane.

Said Dongol, “Law and ethics must be brought and enforced to systemise the development of apartment urbanisation by introducing low cost and affordable apartments for the ordinary people to manage and develop the city in scientific and aesthetic way.”

“We have recently registered the two bills on land transaction and Kathmandu valley town development to the parliament, aiming to set up Town Development Council,” said Khanal. “An Act regarding the apartment and housing system was introduced about a decade ago, but not enough to address the existing problems,” he added.

This was published on THE HIMALAYAN TIMES, June 19, 2009.