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Author's interpretation for the relation between city identity and city image as based on Riza et al. (2012).
Source publication
Contemporary urban development of Kathmandu Valley, the major urban centre of Nepal, has largely failed to deliver positive outcomes, with direct consequences on its public realm. While the problem demands effective management of urban growth and change, there is also a need to expand scholarly dialogues on the impact of urbanization on public spac...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... people can easily correlate the association between city image and city identity, scholars believe that the identity is the wholistic framework within which city image constitutes a part of the parcel. According to a study by Riza et al. (2012), city branding and city identity are mostly linked to an approach of promoting tools for cities (Figure 1). However, city branding concepts are mostly delivered and backed by the marketing strategies to promote and market cities as a product, whereas ...
Context 2
... first aspect deals with the changes in Bagmati River before and after the 1990s. In Bagmati River, the value and sacredness of the river come with the popular belief that the Kathmandu Valley itself originated from the confluence of Bagmati River and Bishnumati River (one of the tributaries of Bagmati River) (Rademacher, 2007) (Figure 1). The river is, thus, considered to be a part of the civilization of the valley which is termed as Bagmati Civilization. ...
Citations
... For many centuries, these towns have demonstrated the potential to generate a high-quality public realm and contributed to a better quality of urban life and social well-being. However, unlike what was observed in the past, the contemporary approaches to urbanisation have largely failed to deliver positive outcomes (Chitrakar & Shrestha, 2020). This is evident in the haphazard development of the new growth areas and the poor provision of basic physical infrastructure and community facilities, including public open spaces, with widespread consequences on urban liveability and the quality of life (The World Bank, 2001;Shah & Pant, 2005;Chitrakar, 2015). ...
... The current trend of urbanisation in the Kathmandu Valley is largely scrutinised as a result of the lack of adequate and coordinated planning measures in the literature (see Adhikari, 1998;The World Bank, 2001;Shrestha, 2005;Shan & Pant, 2005;ICIMOD et al., 2007;Thapa et al., 2008;Chitrakar, 2015;Chitrakar & Shrestha, 2020;Tiwari, n.d.). Most scholars agree that the authorities have failed to regulate new urban development activities due to the lack of an effective control mechanism in place (Adhikari, 1998;Chitrakar, 2015). ...
Kathmandu Valley has a rich urban history and exhibits a distinct pattern of human settlement that is unique even in South Asia. However, the contemporary approaches to urbanisation have failed to deliver positive outcomes as evident in the haphazard development of the new growth areas. Although scholars have long argued about its poor urban planning, the unplanned and uncontrolled growth of the valley has taken place unabated until now and the degrading quality of urban life has remained a growing concern. This chapter reviews urban development in the Kathmandu Valley since its opening up to the modern world in 1951 by closely examining the urban planning initiatives taken by the authorities and the contemporary urban scenario. The chapter offers insights into the drawbacks of the current process of urbanisation and the barriers to a healthy and sustainable city. There is a need for renewed urban planning and policy measures based on new perspectives to look at the current problems. These measures may include approaches such as setting up achievable growth targets, revisiting the traditional wisdom of urbanism, and expanding land pooling schemes.
... As Francis (1989) argues, this move by the GRARC does support the fact that control by one group can deny the right of access to other groups. In a broader sense, the case of excessive control of public spaces in the GRA is against the idea of an inclusive urban space (Lefebvre, 1996), which is a hallmark of the urban design of traditional towns of Kathmandu (Chitrakar & Shrestha, 2020). ...
Public spaces are being increasingly controlled and managed by non-government agencies, and their publicness is shifting constantly, prompting concerns about the nature of the public realm in contemporary cities. Using a qualitative single case study analysis with the data collected from observations and interviews, this paper examines how control has been employed as a regulatory mechanism to manage neighbourhood open spaces in Kathmandu by a local community group, which has emerged as a formally responsible body for public space management. Our findings suggest that excessive control of public space is problematic as it diminishes a user's ability to access open spaces. We analysed this evidence from two lenses. We first considered the transfer of management responsibilities to the community to argue that it has added new challenges to public space management by compromising the public realm. Secondly, from the point of view of the tendency of controlling public space, we maintain that public space managers have to ensure a balance between the need to control the space and making it accessible to the users. Contemporary approaches to public space management should aim for maintaining the public character of an urban place regardless of who owns or controls it.
This article discusses key historical architectural structures in Cambodia and Nepal—the dharmasālā of King Jayavarman VII (c. 1122–1218 CE) and sattal (also known as sattra) structure from Licchavi-era Nepal (c. 450–750 CE). These structures have served a variety of purposes for their local communities in the past and continue to fulfill similar roles even today. In historical Asian cities, the central role of these structures, which were evidently influenced by Buddhism, highlights the importance that the community infrastructure had within Buddhism. Such infrastructure not only brought communities together but also served the needs of the saṅgha. Mentions of halls as “mote halls” are not rare within the Buddhist literature either, with mentions of great assembly halls, or santhāgāra, where the members of the community gathered to discuss matters of social and political interest. A notable hall described in the Jātaka is Mahosadha’s great hall from Māhā-ummagga-jataka. These halls, which are central in the concept of urban settlements and their authority within the Buddhist idea of governance, are a form of community-oriented “commons” infrastructures that can be looked at as “third places” that foster action and speech for public participation in governance. This, we propose, should be seen as a crucial element of Buddhist governance.
