Appendix: Boundary Delineation and Municipalities in Kathmandu Valley

In this publication, we want to be precise about what we mean when we say “Kathmandu Valley”. We take several references into account and come up with our own definition that Kathmandu Valley consists of the whole of Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur districts for expediency in data collation. Mesta et al. (2022) state that “Kathmandu Valley encloses the entire Bhaktapur and Kathmandu districts and approximately 50% of the Lalitpur district” and place the southern boundary at 27°31′42″ latitude. We have overlaid a map of the Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur district boundaries as recorded in Google Maps (accessed 2023-Dec-23) and compared it with the maps in Mesta et al. (2022) between Figures 1 and 2 below. Fig 3. Shows the zoomed-in view of the terrain of Lalitpur around the proposed boundary latitude. While the delineation by Mesta et al. (2022) makes sense in terms of the physical geography of the area, for the purpose of this publication, we will take the population data, and surface area for the whole of the Lalitpur district as was more expedient to compile data from the whole of the Lalitpur district rather than just few of the municipalities in Lalitpur.

Additionally, there have been proposals and declarations towards merging all the municipalities in the Kathmandu Valley into a single mega-city for better planning (Thapa, 2016). More recently, post 2017, Lalitpur district has been reconstituted into rural, urban, and metropolitan municipalities (see Figure 4). This points to a possibility that the future Kathmandu Valley mega-city will include the whole of the Lalitpur district.

Figure 1 Physical and administrative map of Kathmandu Valley, reproduced from Mesta et al. (2022).

Figure 2 Kathmandu, Lalitpur, and Bhaktapur district boundaries extracted from Google Maps by authors in 2023-Dec.

Figure 3 Zoomed view showing latitude and longitude lines near the borders proposed in Mesta et al. (2022).

Figure 4 Map of Lalitpur municipalities, reproduced from EHRP Nepal: https://ehrpinspection.nra.gov.np/maps?district=25

References

1. Mesta, Carlos, Gemma Cremen, and Carmine Galasso. “Urban growth modelling and social vulnerability assessment for a hazardous Kathmandu Valley.” Scientific reports 12.1 (2022): 6152.
2. Thapa, G. (2016, January 10). Valley Municipal Chiefs agree on forming a single Mega City. The Kathmandu Post. https://kathmandupost.com/valley/2016/01/10/valley-municipal-chiefs-agree-on-forming-a-single-mega-city
3. EHRP Nepal. Map of Lalitpur, Nepal. EHRP Nepal: Lalitpur Map. https://ehrpinspection.nra.gov.np/maps?district=25 (Accessed 2023-Dec-23)