UNSETTLING ROADS

abstract

"Road" translates to "Bato" in Nepali. When I type "road' Its meaning takes on the same as Bato in Nepali, which accurately translates closer to "journey."

When mentioning 'roads' unless specified, I am speaking to everything such as the material condition, human experience and the atmospheric reality of such projects.

Ethnographies of Dust across Rural Nepal

MIT SMArchS Architecture + Urbanism 2023

Advised by : Mohamad Nahleh + Huma Gupta

Read by : Dane Carlson

Although the three of us traveled on the same foot-path our intimacy with the land will always be different. This thesis initiates a dialogue between my grandfather, my father, myself, and the roads we took to get home to Hatiya, Nepal. The conversation starts with footpaths and ends within a newly constructed highway, critiquing the method of construction and the spatial intrusions enforced.

Roads precede with expectations of stability and socio economic acceleration, however, In Nepal, and specifically Hatiya, they also unsettle ecological and cultural heritages. The intrusion of the Mid-hill highway along this valley has exploded into expansive networks of unfinished road projects that sit still, frozen and fragmented in a state of continuous construction and destruction. Less than twenty years ago, our hometown stood still and quiet, only connected by historic footpaths. Today, it has transformed into a regional resource anchor attracting many to resettle to Hatiya, lured by the road and the promises it brings.

Road building in Nepal is linked to decades of national promise of forthcoming economic prosperity. The reality is a contested network of material confluence. Over the last three generations, government involvement in rural road expansion has challenged existing notions of time, acceleration, and mobility, resulting in different waves of sociocultural shifts in rural regions of Nepal.

How can roads be deconstructed, redesigned, diverted, and striated, to initiate new types of intimacy with the land. A intimacy and rendering that allows for containment of some operations and the spilling of others. One that welcomes my grandfather's history, my fathers translations and my fragmented understanding and experiences of our hometown.

The following pages narrate the story of one footpath that has been subjected to continuous excavation, expansion, and explosion. The reality of the method has brought economic growth into the region, however, mismanagement and lack of appropriate building practices has saturated road corridors with pollutants and clouds of dust.

This thesis is much about the material transformation and territory expansion of roads as it is of the people who walk on it, inhaling the polluted atmosphere. It is for the unknown physical reality of farmers who are forced to walk on edges of highways. I argue that : The problem is not the promises brought from urban and economic growth, physically manifested, but the methods, management and maintenance to sustain such ambitions that, as I will demonstrate, are unfit for ecosystems in Nepal.

I want to view roads, as places of memory and accumulations. Places with complex narratives that frequently are overlooked among research dialogues. Roads, or "bato" is a way to physically and metaphorically enter a historically isolated region currently undergowing severe amounts of cultural and physical transformations.

Above : A photograph of Hatia in 1990. There are no roads, only footpaths. Over the past 30 years the introduction of the Mid-Hill highway has not only transformed the valley, but its influence has grown upward to peaks of mountains.

Left : A look at life during the 70's in Hatiya. Photographed is my father, Hem and his classmates working on the fields in Hatiya.

From Then To Now

The following triptych depicts the horizontal and vertical transformations of the mid-hill landscape. Agrarian practices and heritages are slowly intruded by road expansion, extension and promises of speed and economic prosperity.

The new highway

Quickly facilitates economic growth anchoring new businesses catered towards economies of tourism and contemporary standards of living. Roads in this region have changed the lives of millions of people, bringing new resources to the region. This project welcomes such new development however it argues towards the methods that are used to deploy such networks. Methods that disregard the existing socioeconomical landscape.

The drawing ends with the current state of rural Nepal with roads and their pollutants occupying not only the valley but also its vertical movement onto the peaks of the Mid-Hills.

As accessibility increases in historically isolated regions of Nepal it is important to also plan for the environmental and social stresses that might emerge due to new construction that operate at historically larger scales.

Above : Highway Corridors

The section above depicts the intrusion of highways and their atmospheric and geological impacts. Issues of over excavation and delayed completions has left this landscape barren and still, materially responding to extreme seasonal forces. Dry seasons are met with clouds of dust while during wet seasons, the roads flow like water burying and destroying what sits in its path

Right : Seasons of Plenty

The life and peripheries of the highway is expressed on the diagram on the right, that exists in parallel with the site map. Instead of its physical reality, the map on the right depicts the seasonal lifespans of a single road. While the base shows the intersections between yearly road lifespans and water, the red highlights the subtle growth of roads and their peripheries. The cultivation has remained cyclical while the urban footprint has slowly started to increase. The drawing is read clockwise following the movement of the red as it starts to infiltrate the cultivated landscape. This impression escalates as the attraction of the road begins to bring in new businesses.

Above : Seasonal Spillage

Roads have existed in Hatiya, in the recent past only in the Valley. Over the past 10 years the economical attraction of road-sides has moved many to migrate into the Valley. The infrastructure and policy yet to keep up to such new social dynamics. What was once contained and considered as economical hubs, the speeds of the valley have spilled outwards and up. The reality being a landscape engulfed in dust, frozen in a state left incomplete. The heavy excavation of the earth, from the valleys to the peaks have widened the footprint of highways. These spaces exist on their own terms and times, forcing those inhabiting its peripheries to comply. This recent spillage up the mountains has intruded upon the farmers’ oasis. Their land which stood above the valley, existing with the seasons. The land which was green, and stable, now sits under a blanket of brown during winter, and gets carried with the water during monsoon season.

Hatiya Now

Hatiya’s built fabric continues to grow as its geopolitical position makes the region a primary corridor to western Nepal. The Midhill highway that runs through the main village is the longest stretch of “smooth” road in Galkot. This micro network has birthed new taxi economies while also accommodating the growth of trans-national commerce.

Before its current state, the highway was predominantly used by those traveling back home. Now the highway is occupied by trucks, and vehicles carrying merchandise. To some extent, the Mid-hill highway project was right to assume that many will shift their occupation to serve the demands of the highway. This demand has birthed new rural typologies, that breathes dust as long as the roads are alive.

The drawing renders the coating of pollutants in the immediate environment. If the growth and road building cultures are to continue at the current rate, the polluted reality will need to be addressed. This transformation and sudden intrusion of pollutants are accelerating at a faster pace than policy to manage the new systems introduced.

Present Hatiya Realities

The continued growth has challenged current human-land relations, diffusing historic intimacies naturally brought by the slowness of traveling. I argue that speed and acceleration of travel brought by the Mid-Hill Highway is connected to the loss of connection with the land, seeing it as an obstacle to overcome rather than an ecosystem to protect. New methods of mobility and desire for connectivity have created a disconnect that has culturally removed local interest in protecting land.

New space typologies have emerged disrupting previous urban–rural divisions. Historically these disruptions have been concentrated within the valley, however over the last decade the construction of new feeder roads have encroached higher altitudes. Senses of belonging and familiarity are lost with increase of capital flows.

The future of Hatiya lies adjacent to the future of road construction. The current reality is a landscape where road construction and connectivity is valued higher than the preservation of land and culture. Modern standards of livelihood seems to be at the forefront of regional and national agendas.

I call on us to reconsider the method of development in the MidHill region of Nepal. A method that negotiates between human centered experience and machine built landscapes.

It has been a decade since the Mid-Hill highway was constructed following outdated and unfit national standards. The current state of the highway

Left: As development varieties continue, this image looks at the material layering and adaptation of new with the old in variously compelling ways.

Map of Greenmount Corridor. Highlighted in Pink is the chosen neighborhood based on proximity to resources such as schools, after school centers, and community centers.