Economy
How Urban Planning Failed Kathmandu
Haphazard urbanization and rampant building code violations in Nepal pushed up the earthquake death toll.
When I visited Nepal's capital Kathmandu years ago, it was a beautiful, hilly city with clusters of quaint buildings. As I walked by the colorful markets lining narrow alleyways, shopkeepers smiled. This weekend, the city was at the epicenter of an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale. City blocks collapsed, century-old monuments were reduced to rubble, and apocalyptic cracks ran through the roads. The city I walked through all those years ago no longer exists.
Eye-witnesses tweeted out the images of the destruction: