The government has now made it mandatory for municipalities and Village Development Committees to identify and conserve unused and open land areas and develop public parks and green spaces. 

The recently approved Building- By-laws by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) has included a provision regarding open spaces, and all the municipalities and VDCs should bring appropriate plans and programmes to conserve these areas for future disaster management. The conserved open spaces could be transformed either into public parks or green spaces. Similarly, the local government authorities are not allowed to approve the use of other public, government-owned, unregistered and barren land to any individuals or groups without the decision from the Cabinet. 

The need of open spaces especially in urban cities has been realised with the government identifying 83 open spaces inside Kathmandu Valley to be used during and after disaster events including earthquakes. The necessity of better network and management of open spaces came into further notice after Nepal was hit by the April 25 earthquake and aftershocks. 

Any available open space inside Kathmandu Valley was used by locals as safe shelters along with humanitarian groups and other logistics groups during earthquake.