▻https://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/kathmandu-chaos-nepal-1502558239.html
Border towns do not believe in open spaces. Everyone is absorbed in the myopia of the moment – with people in transit conducting business with the like-minded in a jostle. Never is it about long-term planning. And this mindset has become contagious. Even in the industrial estates all over Nepal that are basically capturing high value land at low lease rentals, the concept is about just having a row of establishments.
Travelling across Nepal, every municipality or village council seems to find it very easy to build what look like temporary structures on river beds, disputed land and land without papers. The business of just replicating border towns and trading streets has been quite easy, it seems. Far away from the beautiful postcard pictures of the seventies, towns and cities in the past 40 years have started to look alike in their ugliness.
+ south asia focus : chine pakistan