Kathmandu: A reader Edited by BenjaminLinder. Kathmandu: Martin Chautari, 2024. 484 pp.

I dreamed I was at a café in Kathmandu with my mom. It was deeply satisfying to have her there, walking the city streets together and sharing the vibrant, historically rich cityscape. Walking the neighborhoods of Kathmandu, even if only in dreamtime, reflects how the essays in Kathmandu: A Reader move through the city with their audience. The reader covers many neighborhoods of Kathmandu, including the sacred Bagmati River areas, which witness both monthly ritual activity and the ever-increasing seepage of pollution and waste (Ninglekhu, chap. 6; Rademacher, chap. 7). Other essays examine how neighborhoods have changed with the influx of rural-to-urban migrants and the growing commercialism between the airport and the roads leading into central market zones (Linder, chap. 13; Sandhya, chap. 16). These layered transformations illustrate what Doreen Massey describes as the relational nature of place; viewed this way, Kathmandu emerges not as a static heritage landscape but as a continually produced constellation of social relations, mobilities, and intersecting histories. This broader urban change sets the stage for discussions of growth in the form of new memorial parks, widening roads, emerging apartment complexes, and other expanding infrastructure (Khanal et al., chap. 5; Whitmarsh, chap. 8). Greedily, I absorbed the reader's fascinating case studies, which deepened my knowledge of the city after having stayed there at various times since 1986. In one trip down memory lane while reading about Ring Road (Shah, chap. 2), I pictured the small, well-tended rice fields growing outside the balcony of my host family in the Tripureshwor neighborhood along the south Ring Road. This was a stately neighborhood of mostly Newar professional families and teachers, many of whom worked at Tribhuvan University. Today, there are no neighborhood rice fields tended by local residents to supplement their grocery shopping. The city—indeed the entire valley—has thickened with another generation of families rising up to build their own homes (Gutschow & Kreutzmann, chap. 1). Urban sprawl is considered in the reader from a socioeconomic perspective. Over the last generation, the housing and land markets have cycled up and down, shaped by disruptions such as credit crises, war-related migrations, and the 2015 earthquakes. All these disruptive events have had a fundamental impact on the city and its neighborhoods, often leading to abandoned half-built buildings and peri-urban areas without supportive infrastructure like parks, playing fields, gardens, schools, or local markets (Nelson, chap. 3; Haxby, chap. 4). As the wheels of modernity turn, so the shape of the city evolves. The charming rickshaws and tempos, with their brightly painted trim and jingling decor, once served millions (three or six passengers at a time); now they've given way to a barrage of heavier, more dangerous vehicles. Imported autos, larger buses, and masses of motorcycles flow lavalike through the widened roadways, often lacking greenery or pedestrian buffers to protect vulnerable walkers and bicyclists. A few of the contributing essays allow readers to witness, from the safety of our reading nooks, the relative chaos of a city giving sway to developed cityscapes, and the audacity of some to brave the streets on motor scooters, such as young modern women off to work and play (Khanal et al., chap. 5; Brunson, chap. 11). As these essays collectively trace Kathmandu's dramatic physical and social transformations, they echo David Harvey's observation that the “right to the city” is about not merely access but ordinary residents’ ongoing struggles to shape urban futures. They also show how changing infrastructures in the form of roads, vehicles, and housing continually negotiate this contested right. We see a young and growing city that coughs out too much pollution, grows too dense in population, and sprawls into the valley with developers’ plans for new housing complexes, visions that are often contested by neighborhood constituents. Indeed, the reader often reveals what AbdouMaliq Simone terms “people as infrastructure,” or the social networks of mobility, patronage, entrepreneurship, and cooperatives that sustain Kathmandu where formal planning falls short. Several essayists point to what needs to be done. They argue for reducing pollution, regulating unplanned development, and creating viable jobs for both the next generation and the aging one as well, lest residents turn toward informal or black-market economic pursuits (Sheila, chap. 14). Yet the essays also express a hope that this unique “Bagmati civilization” will find the strength to thrive, not only for the haves but also for the have-nots. The families of the Kathmandu Valley, building on a foundational Newar cultural heritage, possess enormous historical resources and forms of wealth with which to address the surmountable problems at hand. My hope is that this book finds its way into students’ hands, tourists’ pockets, and family libraries in both Nepal and abroad. It deserves a place on the bookshelf, and even though the chapters have been previously published, the reader succeeds in reminding us to reflect on Kathmandu's heritage and its prospects. My suggestions for the future are that another iteration of the book be republished in about five years, curated to build on the strengths of the current selections. In it, I encourage the editor to write a short preface to each chapter, reflecting on how each essay highlights the cultural geography of this vibrant cityscape and why each selection was chosen to reflect Kathmandu valley urban studies. Readers want to know more about the valley's cultural geography, and there is a plethora of topics of interest. Much of the reader's ethnographic material comes from a period before the expansion of digital networking technologies in Kathmandu. Since then, recent scholarship on social media use in Nepal has added a new dimension to understanding urban life, particularly among youth, migrants, and political actors. A further point worth underscoring is the temporal frame within which many of the essays were written. Much of the ethnographic research predates the widespread adoption of social media platforms and mobile-based communication that now shape political mobilization, labor migration, and neighborhood relations in Kathmandu. We now have a handful of studies on Nepali digital publics, such as on TikTok, Facebook, and localized messaging apps like Bitchat, which surfaced prominently in discussions surrounding the recent dissolution of the government. These studies suggest that urban belonging increasingly unfolds through digital as well as physical networks. These emerging digital publics reflect what Arjun Appadurai has called the “capacity to aspire,” with a sense of Kathmandu imagining itself forward, as urban residents envision and negotiate futures amid uncertainty. Whether through online political mobilization, transnational labor pathways, or new forms of mediated belonging, a future edition of the reader could fruitfully incorporate this emergent scholarship, situating Kathmandu's urbanism within broader South Asian transformations. Other topics for a future reader might include Kathmandu's growing urban garden movement, from rooftop plots to community green spaces, as residents adapt to climate change and shrinking living areas. Reflecting on these changes, I was reminded of visiting a Paknajol-Kaldhara neighborhood family living just west of Thamel, where they showed off their lovely avocado trees, a relatively new cultivar in the food landscape. The Thamel restaurateur's microfarm blended urban entrepreneurship with a hybrid foodscape where restaurant economies are linked with family plots, small-scale farming, delivery platforms, and changing tastes. One could also imagine essays on the city's emerging aging-care landscape, including new old-age homes near Swayambhu and Boudhanath that reflect shifting family structures. Finally, reflections on the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, including how hospitals, clinics, and neighborhood groups coped, would round out the picture of a city continually responding to social and infrastructural change. Kathmandu is a city worth visiting and revisiting, and this volume opens that vista for future generations. Kathmandu: A Reader offers a kaleidoscope of vignettes, with glimpses of neighborhoods, histories, struggles, and everyday lives that together illuminate this impressive place and its resilient people. It is a book that invites exploration, reflection, and a deeper appreciation of a growing cityscape.