Kathmandu, a city established by the Lichhivsis, then rebuilt by the Mallas, might have never seen the scale of destruction as is being witnessed now, with the notable exception of the deadly 1934 earthquake.
A new neighborhood in Kathmandu City comes into existence in a typical pattern: a house gets built in the middle of a paddy field, followed by exploration of the possibility of getting a road and a connection to sewer, water and electricity supply, if not to telephone, cable TV and internet. A foot-wide trail which separates the ownership of surprisingly oddly shaped plots of lands is widened to two-way pedestrian walkway, which gets further widened to cater a motorbike, and then a car if not a water tanker. If we are lucky enough to have few influential and energetic neighbors, our development reaches its pinnacle as the dirt road gets black-toped to an all-weather one-lane road. The result: an overcrowded Kathmandu, with very little open space, overflowing sewers, drying wells, rupturing waterlines and narrow lanes which are chockablock in rush hours.[break]
And then, the state suddenly realizes the need for intervention. A team of highly motivated regulators dust off the Guided Land Development (GLD) Map developed in 1980s. It tries to implement it straight off, without bothering to check the present site conditions, the development that has already taken place by private participation, the new options available, the legalities and level of public participation. With no public hearing and no dissemination of information regarding the plan, the municipality colors the walls with dreaded red spray marks, followed, by a series of disturbing announcements through loudspeakers, and then, the dreaded bulldozers!
Lack of homework has created unnecessary bottlenecks and reduced public support for the road expansion drive.
It is believed that more than 1,000 houses have already been destroyed and people have lost over Rs 10 billion in demolishing and reconstructing their properties, whereas the funds allocated by the government as compensations is a measly Rs 5 billion. The anxiety felt by each person dwelling in these areas must have been immense, not only because of the alarmingly high dust level, but also because financing a house in this country does not come easy, and often takes away a lifetime’s saving. This pain cannot be explained in monetary terms alone. Also, it is interesting that the authorities that inked the approval (naksa) for construction didn’t at the time believe that the proposed structures were being ‘illegally’ built.
The trend continues, with buildings still being approved and constructed in exactly the same manner, manipulating the laws and appeasing the authorities. The VDCs surrounding the city are centers of gold rush for people wanting to put up a dwelling of their own in the valley. It’s only a matter of time: the lush green suburbs surrounding the valley will swell to become slumming neighborhoods; and one fine morning our regulators will decide to intervene by bulldozing to correct in wholesale the mistakes made through ages.
The effort to correct the urbanization by widening 200 km stretch of road in a city which has grown haphazardly without much planning and regulation cannot be without controversies. However, if explored, there are methods of reconstruction that can satisfy the cross-section of society including the citizens who reside in the affected areas.
When I was working as a Project Manager at the Department of Transportation in Baltimore, US, several years ago, I was amazed at all the designs and alignments for each of the road rehabilitation projects which had to be presented before the stakeholders and neighborhood, not once but in three stages till it would get the final approval in public hearing. This is time consuming, but can add value to the process and help people take ownership of each stretch of development. Development is anyway meant for the people, than for the authorities who implement it.
Roads are being reconstructed following oddly-shaped property lines of plots and exiting serpentine road alignment, not considering the parameters of geometric road design. Every inch added to existing width of the road should be beneficial; however, given the fact that wider the road bigger the vehicle plying on it, makes it necessary to introduce more stringent geometric design. The hurry to widen road haphazardly could lead us to more difficult situations latter; if the project get abandoned in the middle (say with a change of guard in the government), the city of Kathmandu would go from a bad shape to worse.
The estimated investment of over Rs 15 billion in road widening, if not considered merely as expense, will pump that amount into our economy. Even if only one-third of it is assumed as labor cost, it will generate 6,500 jobs for over two years. However, this scarce resource could have been used more wisely if the destruction had been minimized by using proper tool for design and implementation. The level of anxiety and health hazards would have been much lesser too. People would have cooperated and shown their solidarity with government agencies and would have taken ownership of the ongoing development work. We as stakeholders and government agencies as regulators should learn a lesson from the mess we have created and should act on time to regulate and systematize the urbanization process in the rest of the valley.
The author is Director of Business Development & Corporate Affairs, Soaltee Hotel Limited
Related story
Kathmandu Road Division Office starts blacktopping road demolis...
