Nepal lies in the middle of the Asia, north of India and south of China. Kathmandu, being the capital city of Nepal, it is the region where fast economic growth is going on. With the rapid urbanization, the settlement has been centralized in Kathmandu city. Among the different urban infrastructures, transport is one of them. So as the city grows, the scale of demand growth for transport services is much higher as compared to that of other urban services. Since transportation provides the basic space for urban circulation, transport investment contributes greatly in shaping the urban infrastructure and thereby determines the efficiency of the city.
Land use plan provides a vision for the future possibilities of development. Land use planning practices implication includes the existing land use (if any), and current transportation networks. To explain the current land use planning trends and techniques, we should overview the past political events and should be known the mindset of people of Kathmandu towards planning.
The most recent population statistics (2008) have the population of Nepal at 26.9 million. The capital city of Kathmandu is home to roughly 600,000 residents. The greater metropolitan area including Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur consists of over 1 million residents. The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) includes the 35 administrative wards
As the city grows, there should be the link between planning process and urban infrastructure. The linkage between land use planning and transportation infrastructure has the greater priority of importance. So the relationship between population distribution and transportation infrastructure across a metropolitan area has the measure importance.
Many old and new settled cities of Nepal including Kathmandu have suffered due to lack of effective planning process. So the present land use patterns and population distribution in the Kathmandu metropolitan area must be examined for its relationship with the transport network which serves as the lifeline for any modern city.
In transition period of government (2008), there was a little collaboration in decision making in urban planning and land use planning. Although both the local and regional land use and development plans do exist but the implementation of those plans was slow and often drawn out. After entering into the United Nations in 1955, Nepal began receiving increased foreign aid. As a result, in the 1960’s a document was published entitled “The Physical Development for Kathmandu Valley” in the joint effort of Nepal and United Nations. The objective of the plan was historical preservation, reducing congestion in cities, urban renewal, and the production of a land use map. Due lack of political stability, these documents were never implemented.
Effective land use planning categorizes the land in terms of resource and a service to the population. Land can be used in agriculture as a resource and also can be used to conduct business as a service. So, the balance between supply and demand of land for development can be maintained by certain planning support systems.
Land is divided into two categories; agriculture ad non agriculture. The non-agricultural land is then classified as residential, commercial, industrial, etc. Land use planning effectiveness depends on the availability and accuracy of information. As Ministry of Physical Planning and Works was established in 2000, there is a data consolidation issues and much of the paper records is not digitalized yet. Another obstacle to land use planning is lack of cooperation between local and national organizations. The cooperation are lacking in terms of information sharing and decision making.
In Kathmandu Metropolitan, The current residential areas are extremely densely populated and thus many buildings are right next door to each other with only a little common cloister. This is the result of the rapid population growth and the historic compact settlement patterns. So the relationship between land use and transportation should be addressed in terms of qualitative observations and quantitative population and transportation statistics.
As the city grows, the population is increased and as a result of this, the scale of the demand growth for transport services is much higher as compared with that of other urban services, such as electricity and water. The city grows up so fast that transportation networks can’t keep up with the demand. So land use planning should be based on future population projections in order to plan for the demand of people. So, planners and government officials should research on the relationship between planning and unexpected increase in population.
Current transportation networks are unable to support the traffic, so people do their business where they live. So the transportation networks can’t meet the basic needs of the people to get where they need to go. People will start to do small business near home for e.g. selling cloths out of their home.
The current state of the existing conditions including land uses, land use patterns, population settlement patterns, road conditions and transportation infrastructure verify that the planning efforts on a whole have not been enough to improve the future conditions in Kathmandu.