Urban Housing Reconstruction Status Paper

This status paper has been prepared by HRRP with the objective of providing an overview of progress in urban housing reconstruction to date, as part of the ongoing Post-earthquake recovery efforts in Nepal. The paper documents challenges and successes of reconstruction beneficiaries and retrofitting beneficiaries.

The paper provides a short background of urban context of Nepal, which helps in understanding of three concepts-urban, urbanization and urbanism. Furthermore, it gives an overview of how various Municipalities/Palikas are classified in Nepal. Also, HRRP's concept of urban wards are defined in greater detail in this paper. A brief summary of urban housing issues before the Gorkha earthquake is provided for readers for understanding of inherent issues that is now repeated in urban housing recovery.

Nepal's official earthquake recovery phase is going to end with disengagement of the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) by the end of 2021. However, private housing recovery of urban areas is still far behind. This fact has been highlighted through various statistics, research and maps. These resources show achievements and gaps in urban housing recovery till date. It is hoped this will help in prioritization of geographic areas at the three levels of government (federal, provincial and local level) in the next phase of future interventions post NRA tenure.

Urban recovery activities will have to be conducted also in historic settlements of Kathmandu valley. Therefore, a dedicated Chapter Four, introducing characteristics of historic settlements is also provided for the readers, in this paper. Nepal will have to undertake urban recovery as well as urban development together in coming years. Hence, it would be logical to have an understanding of national and international policies, acts, agreements and documents related to urban development. A separate, Chapter Three is dedicated to give a brief description for these important documents.