Nepal has adopted periodic development plan since 1956by introducing periodic development plan.
Inception of the First Five Year Plan conceived the ideas of the high population pressure to
resources in the hills and mountains, whereas the tarai had sparse population with wide forest cover.
The first attempt to incorporate spatial dimension in Nepal’s planning envisaged a series of northsouth
growth axes (development corridors) linking diverse natural regions and development regions
from west to the east in 1970s with a clear objectives to capture the balance development of the
country. Out of 58 constituent urban centers, Kathmandu is a single Metropolitan City, Pokhara,
Lalitpur, Birgunj and Biratnagar are four Sub-Metropolitan Cities and the rest are Municipalities
classified according to the By-Laws of Government of Nepal. Most of district headquarters are
emerging as urban centers and these centers are emerging as development hub. They have
concentration of urbanized function, amentias and services. Among then development parameters are
highly concentrated close to the capital city Kathmandu. Kathmandu Valley alone has five units of
urban centers where 5.5 percent (1,453,391) of nation’s total urban population is confined. Besides
that tarai has 30 urban units with 45.9 percent (2,023,006) of urban population of the nation.
Therefore, over half of the urban population of the nation is confined in tarai and Kathmandu Valley.
In this paper factual database about twelve indicators of four different parameters i.e. economic,
social, infrastructure and governance of latest date compiled from the publication of Central Bureau
of Statistics (CBS) and National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal have been analyzed.
The analysis shows that the development activities are confined close to the urbanized geographical
regions i.e. Kathmandu Valley and the tarai regions of the country. This clearly gives a message of
national development towards the thread of urbanization rather in reducing geographical disparity.