Another big earthquake on May 12 after 18 days from the first one made us rethink again. Most of our assumptions and our knowledge-based approaches are once again challenged. The management of shared open space and their utilization for providing housing related services became more critical in the overall provision of urban services during and after the disaster. People returned to open space once again after getting back to their houses for a day or two. More buildings collapsed leading to more housing shortage.
Our recent exposure to disasters shows that we have been providing housing at standards that our society as a whole cannot afford. Instead of making the rich contribute to create built public spaces to enhance the social good, the policy worked to allow them to appropriate resources for constructing their abode creating externalities on others. Ignoring this, efforts have been made to sustain what is basically unsustainable. This became clear after the earthquakes. Yet some are still seeking ways and means to sustain what has proved to be unsustainable by distorting facts. The resources from outside did not come up as expected since there is conflict between national pride and external dependence; instead of collaborative efforts, the issue of who should provide relief to the affected cropped up in a thorny way.
Although action on housing is being highly politicized we should not forget that Nepal should take this as an opportunity to sustain what needs to be made sustainable. We should try to improve our plight through the building of our resilience. We should learn from our own experiences such as basic housing needs, integrated action planning and land pooling. We should set our goals commensurate with our resources and integrate the external help into our plan in order to allow all to help us. We should learn to cut our coat according to our cloth and prepare plans to shape housing demand that satisfies our housing needs.
There is an ever increasing gap between our earnings and expenses on housing including taxes. Access to land is rapidly decreasing. The implication of rebuilding on sustainable land management needs to be considered. It is necessary that we should try to avail some of our needs at neighborhood or community level. In Kathmandu, the low-income wage earners do not get any opportunity to save and invest in any housing related areas. Given the complexities and confusions that we have created, we should intensify response and action to pave the way for rebuilding with less resource while meeting more of our needs. Community-driven activities directed to meeting housing needs are reported to be minimal even at this time of emergency. There is lack of common shared space as well as the political access required to carry out such activities. We should enhance social cohesion as a part of rebuilding.
It is clear that individual families will not be able to meet their housing needs themselves with limited support from the government. Nor the government will be able to meet their housing needs. Some of the needs ought to be fulfilled at the neighborhood level by providing community space; this will reduce needs at the family level. It is necessary to form a group of perspective house builders and form a cluster. Without assessing the available resources and the possible impact of the anticipated housing expenditure on our economy, particularly the supply of building materials and labour, housing programs may not work. There may be more chaos and disorder apart from inequity. We should thus try to reduce housing needs at the private family level by sharing the available common space in the production of housing related services at affordable prices. We should integrate the re-development of heritage sites with the meeting of community level housing needs.Some of the common spaces in Kathmandu are already intensely utilized, we should invest more to improve the environment there to enhance their sustainability and meet community needs.
Two things have become self-evident. First the production and sustainable use of common space, whether built or open and whether managed by public, private or community needs to be improved. If we could develop and implement strategies for the sustainable production and utilization of “common and shared spaces” for availing housing related needs, the cost of providing services can be drastically reduced. School premise or heritage sites that could have been easily used as spaces for risk mitigation services have become a huge liability now.
The process towards convergence of interest, we could clearly see, is still ongoing. It is taking longer time since we are primarily working on political rationality. We rely on political alliance and hierarchy and strength of party leaders. We know housing is a political process and the implementation will depend on the articulation of interests of different political players. They should realize that action will suffer if they ignore the power of knowledge and if they fail to transpire technical rationality in the process of rebuilding.