Newly urban Nepal

Abstract

Urban planning guidelines and land use plans exist in Nepal, the difficulties lie in implementation. Specifically, who must follow the law and in which parts of the city must urban planning be implemented. This is being actively negotiated between newly elected local government officials and residents in rural areas of the city. This Urban Pulse essay presents an incremental logic of urban planning from the perspective of the local government as a negotiated practice in the aftermath of administratively created urbanization, municipalization and decentralization efforts. While Nepal is situated ‘out of sight’ in global urban debates, Nepal matters because similar processes are occurring in other ordinary, academically overlooked places throughout the world. The essay questions how urban planning incorporates urbanizing peripheries into its regulatory fold when the local government has not governed certain spaces in the past and residents do not understand what is expected of them.