The proposed 72 km long Outer Ring Road (ORR) project for the Kathmandu valley with construction of
50 m wide road and development of 250 m of land on either side through land pooling technique has a
vision of developing the valley as a National Capital Region and managing the population growth in the
next 15-20 years through planned urban development. This ambitious project not only covers forty
Village Development Committees, three Municipalities and one Metropolitan City but also comprises of
two major interrelated components: eight lane highway and land pooling scheme. Numerous stated
objectives of the proposed ORR project such as decentralisation of business activities to the peripheral
new areas through development of new 'business centres' with mixed land use and coordinated
infrastructure development at different nodal points can not be realised fully in the present situation not
only due to inadequate legal and institutional framework and poor capacity of the implementing agency
but also because of lack of master plan of the Kathmandu valley and absence of planning standards and
urban design guidelines at city level.