Development Dynamics and Sustainability in the Newly Formed Municipalities of Kathmandu Valley: A Case of Kageshwori Manohara Municipality

Abstract

Cities offer a significant range of opportunities and life quality improvements to their residents. Kathmandu Valley from its historic period has been the political and economic capital seat of the country. With the increasing global trend of urbanization, Valley is also growing with Kathmandu city regarded as one of the fastest urbanizing cities of South Asia. The impact of urbanization currently is not only limited within the core of Kathmandu but rather has spread in the suburb areas. The figure above shows the growth trend of Kathmandu Valley. The total built up area in 1989 was 5% which has increased to 26% by 2016 as per the study of Ishtiaque et al. It is seen to be expanding rapidly outwards after 2009. Till 2016, the intensification at center and spread outwards both can be seen. It is in 2014 the new municipalities were added to the Valley. Kageshwori Manohara municipality which fell under rural areas just half a decade back is now an independent municipal corporation. The development pattern of the municipality is studied under demography, land use, mobility and economy. The obtained analysis is further compared to the Planning Norms and Standards 2015 to find out if it is growing in a planned manner or not. The increasing population and in-migration rate confirmed that Kageshwori Manohara is a growing city. However, the larger share of this urbanization is concentrated on the southern areas of the municipality that shares its boundary with the Kathmandu Metropolitan City. In this research, the municipality is divided into three clusters with three wards in each to ease the analysis of urban growth. From the study, it was found that the Kageshwori Manohara is growing as a peripheral city of Kathmandu. The improved and easy road access between Kageshwori and Kathmandu is one of the major contributing factor to the urban growth of Kageshwori. Additionally, the cheaper land and construction cost is another important factor. Nonetheless, the urban form of Kageshwori does not follow any central idea and is rather growing organically in a sprawl type manner. The sparsely located settlements are causing the loss of agricultural land at a larger extent and do not meet the desired density as mentioned by the norms. The dependency of the municipality to Kathmandu is also quite high for urban services like health, education, job opportunities adding daily mobility as an important part of daily lifestyles of the people living in the municipality. Due to the influential development, urban growth is seen only in the clusters closer to Kathmandu while the other clusters to the North still exhibit rural-urban characteristics. While it is absolutely normal for a smaller city to depend upon larger for its services, some issues were discovered during the study which on the long run would make KMM difficult to sustain as a city. Some of the major issues being the economic dependency upon grants and the traffic congestion getting complex each day. Accordingly, it is also quite not sure whether the city will flourish due to its proximity to larger city or the growth of larger city will hamper the growth. However, in both the scenario it is important that Kageshwori adapt the planning principles so it can establish itself as a part of an urban agglomeration of Kathmandu Valley. The major of the recommendations that has been formulated by the research is the empowerment of municipalities, promoting public transportation and implementing planning approaches with public participation.