The constitution of Nepal 2015 created 7 provinces, 77 districts with 6 metropolitan and 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 urban and 460 rural municipalities. At present, 58% of the Nepal’s population lives in urban area which was only 17% as per census 2011. The major causes of rapid urbanization are reclassification and migration from rural to urban areas which resulted in urban infrastructure deficit.
The key shortcoming of Nepal’s urbanization effort is that the agenda is being implemented through disjointed projects/ activities with inadequate planning or no planning for whole urban area. The ‘Master Plan’ approach generally excludes peri- urban areas and focus only on core area of the city and has little linkages to any financial and operating strategy. And in many cases, Master Plan is used as a regulatory tool instead of being a blueprint for development of planned city.