Limitations:

The lack of scientific urban planning has undoubtedly increased the degree of disaster damage. One of the limitation is the urban planning cannot really prevent informal construction on disaster risk areas. Because the construction can be out of control, for instance, urban planners may intend to leave an area of risk vacant, but an increase of population and the limit of land would push people of lower economies to build their house here. Bijracharya et al. (2015) explain that land rated and construction costs in the city of Kathmandu are very expensive hence the only people can afford to buy land and construct a residential house is from the middle class and above. The government tries to build public housing but is impossible in the reality because of the excessive cost of land. Land ownership is also the biggest issue in terms of urban planning. The landowners of the areas with high risk of disasters are still constructed the settlements here by renting out to the low-income residents to gain extra cash to compensate their daily spending (The Asian Development Bank, 2016).

When refer to the disaster risks reduction, urban planning may cause some side effects that people cannot predict it. In order to solve the above housing problems, due to the limit of land, a lot of buildings were been built at the most hazardous zones. The expansion of urban land has also encroached on a large number of farmland, water areas and open green areas, transforming the green land into construction land. For instance, widening the road could create better access and enable the more efficient evacuation route for marginalized settlements. However, such action could also increase traffic-related hazards, cause landslides if the perpendicular cut for the road in the hillside is not well selected, in certain way that increase the vulnerability of disasters (Wamsler, 2006).