Population Density

The most significant demographic aspect of Bhaktapur for the purposes of this study besides its stability is its population density. In a pioneering study of the physical and cultural geography of Nepal, Pradyumna Karan (1960, 51) remarked that:

Few parts of the world are more empty than the snow-covered ranges of northern Nepal; few parts are more crowded than the Kathmandu Valley. . . . In the major areas of concentration the average population densities range from 500 to 700 per square mile, and there are rural densities in a few small areas of more than 800 per square mile. Such density of rural population is hardly approached in Western Europe or North America; it is equaled only in monsoon Asia and in a few small areas of Africa and the Caribbean. Despite the many empty areas, virtually all of Nepal's space is fully used in terms of the number of people it can support with its present technology. . . . The population of Kathmandu's urban area attains a density of 47,783 per square mile, almost twice that of New York City.

Bhaktapur's density is still higher. A survey cited in Acharya and Ansari (1980, 105f.) estimates that when the open spaces are removed the concentration of people in the built-up residential areas of Bhaktapur is 110,334 people per square mile. Most of those open spaces are at the outskirts of the city, and our own estimates of the settled area give a density of some 117,000 people per square mile for the remainder of the city, including its inner open spaces. Such population density is even more striking in that the city has a considerable number of such open spaces and public squares and that, in contrast to modern inner cities, most of its houses consist of five stories or less.

Such figures are astonishing not only in themselves but also because for those familiar with "downtown" areas of New York, London, or Calcutta, Bhaktapur in no way seems crowded . Throughout the entire city space there is an orderly and widely distributed placement of people and of their movements. it is only during certain of the city's annual

festivals when much of the population gathers together at one or another focal point or area that the great mass of population becomes apparent in an unusual concentration that in itself generates some of the meaning of the festival.