Urban Planning Fail

http://www.citylab.com/2015/04/how-urban-planning-failed-kathmandu/391499/?utm_source=nl_daily_link3_042715

Kathmandu, Nepal before and after the earthquake
telegraph.co.uk

Hello Everyone:

By now we have all seen the devastating pictures and video of Saturday April 25th, 7.8 earthquake in Nepal.  Nepal is a landlocked country, sandwiched between China and India. Nepal is best-known as home, along with Tibet, to Mount Everest in Mahalangur section of the Himalayas.  The scenes are horrifying: whole "...City blocks collapsed, century-old monuments were reduced to rubble and apocalyptic cracks ran through the roads." These are the scenes described by Tanvi Misra in her article for City Lab, "How Urban Planning Failed Kathmandu."  Ms. Misra's article looks at how urban planning amplified the disaster in Kathmandu and ponders what comes next.  In describing the Kathmandu she visited years ago, Ms. Mirsa laments, "The city I walked through all those years ago no longer exists.

Large crack in the pavement
Kathmandu, Nepal
citylab.com

Eye-witnesses tweeted and posted the tale of destruction.  It is impossible to truly grasp the massive scale of loss done at the hand of the earthquake.  Thus far, more than 5,200 people have died (http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/29/asis-nepal-earthquake) and thousands more have been injured.  Rescue operations continue amid the powerful aftershocks.  Earthquakes in this region are not particularly novel to this region-Nepal lies on the Indus-Yarlung suture zone which experiences a magnitude 8 earthquake about every 75 years.  Therefore, in geological terms, this past Saturday's earthquake occurred right on schedule, 81 years after the last major temblor in 1934.  (http://www.wsj.com/.../how-the-nepal-earthquake-happended-like-clockwork-143...)  Of course, this is no comfort to the people who lost family members.

Nepalese soldier walking through the rubble
thestate.com

However, as Tanvi Misra writes, "But haphazard urbanization around the Kathmandu Valley amplified the fatal force of the the disaster."  An April 2013 World Bank report, "Urban Growth and Spatial Transition in Nepal: An Initial Assessment" by Elisa Muzzini and Gabriela Aparicio summed up the issue:

Unplanned urban development in the Kathmandu Valley has led to rapid and uncontrolled sprawl; irregular, substandard, and inaccessible housing development; loss of open space, and decreased livability.  It has also increased vulnerability to disasters, making Kathmandu on of the most earthquake-vulnerable cities in the world. (https://www.worldbank.org/en/.../2013/04/.../managing-nepals-urban-urban-transi...)

Drone images showing the damage in Kathmandu
ibtimes.co.in

Citing the report, Ms. Misra continues, "According to the report, Kathmandu city has been one of the fastest-expanding metropolitan areas in South Asia." Be that as it may, the majority of the growth has not been planned or regulated.  For example, "In the rural areas, satellite town have grown without much guidance from the government," Ms. Misra writes, further citing the report.  If unchecked sprawl was not bad enough, commercial, retail, residential developments built within the city proper have not followed safety codes that would protect human life during an earthquake.  Robert Piper, former resident coordinator for the United Nations in Nepal told the Thompson Reuters Foundation, "The building code is a serious issue.  In a place like Kathmandu, a new building pops up every day which is not building to code." Oddly paraphrasing the over used National Rifle Association maxim, "Buildings kill people, not earthquakes." (http://www.trust.org)

A young monk at "The Monkey Temple" (damaged)
Kathmandu, Nepal
mountainworldproductions.com

 Sad to report that city's predicted vulnerability has come true.  However, this situation is not unique to Kathmandu-the Thompson Reuters Foundation reports that several rapidly urbanizing South Asian cities also demonstrate similarly dangerous growth pattern.  Case in point, New Delhi, India. (Ibid)  D.K. Paul, professor emeritus at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee's earthquake engineering department told The Hindustan Times, "Not only is Delhi densely populated but there is a complete lack of enforcement by authorities concerned to ensure that building codes and structural safety norms are followed." (http://www.hindustantimes.com)  According to Prof. Paul, "if the epicenter of Saturday's earthquake had been near New Delhi, half of the city-which is so much bigger than kathmandu in population and size-would have been leveled to the ground.  Scary thought. Tanvi Misra concludes on an optimistic note, "Hopefully the present tragedy, and the prospect of future ones, will force cities to reassess their urban planning efforts before the next natural disaster hits."