The urban development of Kathmandu Valley in 2009 was largely dominated by the private sector’s land and housing development, overshadowing the public sector’s negligible effort to manage the urban environment.
Capitalizing on the overt reliance of “capital market” in the real estate sector, both informal and formal private sectors engaged themselves in a rapid conversion of agricultural land to urban land and housing development. In the absence of effective government regulating mechanism, such development helped creating a “bubble market” with ever increasing exorbitant costs and pseudo demand for land and housing products.
On the economic plane, the result of bubble market, on one hand, has alienated the real estate consumers from entering the housing market, increased the investment risks and contributed to the poverty of urban farmers and, on the other hand, it has negatively affected the existing cultural and ecological contexts of the city which are conspicuously prominent in overcrowding, constrained infrastructure, depletion of natural resources, and degradation of cultural identity of the Kathmandu Valley.
In the social sphere, the current housing development practice has increased the residential differentiation, contributing to differential social living due to the haphazard spatial development. These problems have hindered the land and housing sectors to emerge as the “real sector of the economy.”
Now, with the central bank coming hard on real estate investment, it is expected in 2010 that supply will exceed the demand, resulting in significant “land price decrease,” making it accessible to all the actors of the land and housing market. This means that in the next year, one can expect the emergence of the real “housing sector” that can cater to the “effective demand” of the most needy residents of the Valley. The real housing sector with effective demands will be instrumental in providing housing at affordable prices at the right locations, and refrain from haphazard spatial development, thus serving as a stable indicator of economic development.
Apart from this, the emergence of real housing sector is expected to contribute positively to the spatial organization of the city in terms of its existing and proposed planning context. With public sector taking more proactive role as facilitator, this will be an important shift from the existing housing development practice that can overcome the problems related to socio-cultural living and ecological sensitivity of Kathmandu’s cities.
The year 2010 can also be expected to be a boon for architectural, planning and construction-related professionals because of the prospective development of the real housing sector that is able to cater to effective demands.
Sanjaya Uprety teaches Urban Planning at Masters Level.
Published on 2010-01-01 13:27:12
This news item is printed from myrepublica.com - a sister publication of Republica national daily.
© Nepal Republic Media Pvt. Ltd. Kathmandu Nepal.
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