5.1 Urbanization and Population Growth

Urbanization: the rising share of people living in urban settlements — in Nepal, the municipality- map's expansion plus the Valley's magnetism. The dynamics:1. Rural-to-urban migration — the hills to the Terai towns; the districts to Kathmandu, Pokhara, and the border cities.2. The primate-city problem: the Valley's over-concentration (services, jobs, and the state's own offices clustering) versus secondary cities' under-development.3. Urban services' race: housing, water, waste, and transport lagging the influx — the informal settlement question.4. The legal city: municipal boundaries, building bylaws, and land-use planning as urbanization's weak steering (planned-city instruments versus the organic city's realities).