Project Appraisal: Selling Dreams

The Kathmandu Valley Urban Development Plans and Programmes Study

This Project, the latest in a series of master plans that have been proposed for Kathmandu Valley over the past three decades, was funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and executed by a British consulting firm, Halcrow Fox and Associates. The study started in October 1990 and was over by September 1991.

The project's terms of reference was a detailed document that held much promise. The consultants' brief was to develop a comprehensive "Valley Structure Plan" incorporating development planning, infrastructural programmes (for transport, sewerage, drainage and water supply) and land-use, economic and population strategies, all projected to the year 2015. There was also to be a "Central Area Plan" for Kathmandu with proposals for land-use pattern, population densities, open spaces and public facilities, preservation of areas, and investment.

Halcrow Fox was also to propose the following: local area plans for suburban development, focusing on drainage, water supply and investment; land development proposals with a focus on public and private sector ventures, financing and cost recovery; a five year slum upgrading programme identifying sites and cost estimates; riverside protection plans, and programmes for environmental management with reference to air quality, water quality as well as an economic analysis. On top of all this, Halcrow Fox experts were asked to provide economic and financial justification for each proposed programme, including cost recovery mechanism such as land taxation, prepare recommendations for financing and to provide a schedule for planned investments. They were to review the existing organisational structure, propose institutional development, make a broad based assessment of the housing sector, and make proposals.

WISHFUL THINKING

With the terms of reference making such specific demands and requiring such meticulous and long-term work, it was clear from the start 'that even the best consultants could not have been able to produce a useful report in less than a year. The stated objectives were bound to be diluted in their delivery, as has now happened in Halcrow Fox's report.

The consultants divided their study package into four reports, dealing with a "Strategy Plan" in three volumes, a concept plan for the Kathmandu Historic Area, one for the "Bishnumati Corridor" and another on "small towns and valley development". The Strategy Plan provides an overall planning framework for urban development of the Valley and proposes a ten-year investment programme for infrastructural development.

Halcrow Fox's report is, generally speaking, big on recommendations and weak on instruction. For example, its proposal to curb low-density urban sprawl by optimising urban land-use with proper planning is worthy. But the consultants do not let on the secret of activating such a proposal, given the present land-ownership and sub-division regulations and the absence of supportive urban legislation. Wishful thinking and good intentions do not an urban development plan make.

The recommendation that infrastructure be developed before land development is a sound one, but there is no working strategy prescribed that is tailored to a Nepali context. Halcrow Fox proposes that the public transport system be developed with private sector involvement, and categorically suggests that fares must be increased on a self-financing basis. One wonders how such a statement can be made a priori, in the absence of fare structure studies, in the report or elsewhere.

The major proposal for institutional development is to do away with the present five-tier system (from the municipality level to the national level), and to have a two-tier system with a Kathmandu Valley Development Council and three new municipal District Councils. It appears that this inherently political proposal was developed by Halcrow Fox in a vacuum, without consulting any of the target groups involved.

The investment strategy up to the year 2001 indicates the need to raise NRs 10,310 million under the various heads. While this figure might serve some purpose in starting a discussion, the consulting firm makes no effort to illuminate us as to where this money will come from, as the terms of reference required them to do. There is timid and unconvincing talk of resource mobilisation through taxes and external financial assistance, but nothing more.

Perhaps the major problem with the study is the assumption that Kathmandu Valley is a self-contained, self-sustaining entity, which is more reminiscent of a pre-1950s Valley than today's. For better or worse, contemporary Kathmandu Valley has deep economic, commercial and cultural ties with the rest of the country quite unlike what Halcrow Fox experts seem to think. Their Kathmandu-centricity makes the report needlessly lop-sided.

BISHNUMATI CORRIDOR

Among the programmes proposed by the study is a "local area plan" for the stretch of the Bishnumati which defines the western boundaries of Kathmandu's city core before the river joins the main Bagmati stream. This sector has suffered from much disregard and neglect on the part of planners. This has harmed not only the area's residents, but has hampered sound urban development of Kathmandu Valley as a whole.

Unfortunately, as with the rest of the present study, an ambitious plan to revive the area is flawed by inability to address the most difficult issue of implementation. The proposal does not adequately take into account the questions of sustenance (management of food, shelter, energy, wastes), safety (safeguard against pollution, maintenance of water quality) and consonance (pragmatic interface between natural assets and the development strategy).

The consultants state candidly enough that, "In the absence of statutory controls on land use and a plan to effect them, there is little that can be done…" And yet, they go on to dictate that "the land between the east bank and the city core should be designated as open space." The report's concern for the cultural heritage on the east bank (in the form of temples and ghats) is admirable, but the proposed landscaping treatment is cosmetic and does not consider the river-front' s intrinsic relationship with the city core. The consultants have not elaborated the site-specific issues, nor have they taken a macro-look at the linkages with other open spaces for greater Kathmandu.

Development of a "Bishnumati Corridor"; by opening up a link road from Balaju along the river bank south to Teku was addressed in a proposal made 16 years-ago by Michael Graham, a United Nations landscape expert, under the direction of G.N. Rimal in the Buildings Department. The 1974 proposals, which this writer also helped draft, holistically addressed transport planning, waterfront works, revitalisation of the cultural heritage and other aspects as part of the corridor development. The idea was to energise a deteriorated sector of town. Unfortunately, the area remains "land-locked" to this day because the 1974 proposals were ignored due to indifference on the part of the Ministries of Transport and Finance.

Interestingly, the "local area plan" developed by Halcrow Fox is based on the same Bishnumati corridor concept, although it does not give even a nod to the 1974 report. Its own plan is weakened because, by the firm's own admittance, detailed site investigations were not carried out. This is interesting, because the project contract required the consultants to provide a complete "package" for the link road, including technical drawings and specifications. Instead, the report proposes yet another foreign-aided technical assistance project to work out the detailed area plan — as if we have not got wise to this tired formula of never-ending cycles of externally-funded and executed studies and reports. There is enough information available to propose concrete projects along the Bishnumati today, particularly because of the groundwork carried out by the 1974 study.

Grandiose plans are not difficult to make. What takes more effort is to propose realistic means to implement them, and it seems, in the case of the Bishnumati corridor as well as in terms of the Kathmandu Valley study as a whole, that Halcrow Fox would rather leave the hard work to others and take credit for selling dreams.

The project falls short of the purported vision behind ADB 's financing as detailed in the terms of reference. More importantly, it does not provide a practical guide on how to move ahead with the task of saving the Valley. As a rule, plans that are useful and future-oriented always raise some debate. It may indicate something that, in the three months since it was published, the Halcrow Fox study has not raised a ripple.

The time-frame was incredibly short for so ambitious a programme, and both the Bank and the Ministry of Housing and Physical Planning might have considered this aspect. They might also have done a more thorough job in selecting a consulting firm and monitored the involvement of "local hires" in the project, to ensure that Nepali consultants taken on by Halcrow Fox were a) competent, and b) recognised for their competence with appropriately high fees. The tendency, all too often, is to make extravagant promises while signing project documents, with the connivance or acquiescence of donor institution officials and host country bureaucrats, and then to make do with experts hired locally and "on the cheap", regardless of their abilities.

If more Kathmandu Valley development plans are not to gather dust, the Nepali Government must define a policy regarding projects of national importance. Where old plans can be studied and updated, are whole new exercises necessary, at such great cost? It might be less earth-shaking but cheaper to have a project that picks up an old plan and makes an honest effort to update it. We also need to ask whether the donor agency (in the present context the ADB) and the concerned Government department should participate as equals in selection of consultants. As far as high-priced international consultants are concerned — let us decide under what circumstances they are absolutely necessary. We must refrain from taking grants and assigning consultants just because they are there. The Nepali people are the ones who lose in the long run.

Unfortunately, because of the nature of the long-on-recommendations and short-on practicality report they have presented, and because of the basic Nepali bureaucratic inertia, Halcrow Fox's recommendations for Kathmandu Valley seem destined to join its predecessors on the dusty racks.

Sharma is an architect and environmental planner. He works in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.