Code & Construction
THE Kathmandu Valley, in many ways, is an urban chaos. Lack
of city planning over the decades has told on the cityscape badly. The frenzied pace at
which construction activities went on in the city core areas of the three cities of the
Valley without a long-term vision has resulted in an urban nightmare. Multi-storey houses
spring up in the most unlikely places, adjacent to monuments of immense cultural
significance. The public land is encroached upon with impunity. Narrow roads get narrower,
with all its effects on the traffic movement. The ten-year old existing building code of
the Kathmandu metropolis, for example, is often violated with house-builders having
comfort in the knowledge that the enforcement mechanism is weak and they will not be
easily penalised. It has been felt that the existing building code itself was much less
than perfect and urban experts have been pointing out that it needed to be upgraded. As a
result of a poor building code that did not embrace the needs of a fast-growing city,
Kathmandu keeps seeing cinema halls and hospitals springing up in the most congested
residential neighbourhoods. Hotels and commercial buildings come up without regard to
having a minimum parking space. A news in this daily the other day informed that the
Kathmandu cityspace may be arrested from getting worse if a new comprehensive scheme to
set things right is implemented. The Kathmandu Valley Mapping Programme (KVMP), a joint
venture of Kathmandu Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) and the European Union, is launching a
scheme to regulate the building pattern to control haphazard urbanisation. The programme
will set new standards for housing construction and improve the system of traffic
management, mapping of the valley and number of houses.
According to the plan, the new standard, approved by the
Kathmandu Metropolis Council seven months ago, makes it compulsory to have the design
approval from the Physical Planning Advisory Committee for the construction of public
buildings like cinema halls, apartments, nursing homes, hotels and so on. The scheme to
bring some order to the chaotic building scene in the Valley is welcome. But it will come
to nought, if again the code is not strictly implemented. If the existing code itself were
strictly put into force in the past, Kathmandu would not have seen the higgledy-piggledy
construction all over the city. Hence, the KVMP and KMC must bear it in mind that unless
enforcement mechanisms are sound and workable, a new building code would not by itself
have a salutary effect on the Valley cityspace.
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