Urbanization in Developing Countries: Urban Centers vs. National Transportation Network; Case Study for Nepal

摘要

As the process of urbanization is going up rapidly, mobility and accessibility are declining in most of the developing world. Some of the factors affecting to this are as rapid pace of motorization, lower capacity of the transport infrastructure, lack of appropriate traffic management and adequate road maintenance, poor land use planning for the urban growth. In this context, Nepal and its neighboring countries are facing the problem of declining urban mobility due to haphazard urbanization, resulting from the insufficient infrastructure development. In the first part of this paper urbanization scenario of the developing world is illustrated. As the case study, all fifty eight Municipalities in Nepal are investigated and compared with respect to the geographical, socio-economic, and demographic characteristics. Urbanization tempo, strategic road network development and related issues are studied. ArcView-GIS is used for the spatial analysis and presentation. Urban centers with respect to the national strategic road network are compared.