On a weekday afternoon in Koteshwar, 11-year-old Aayan Bikram sits near the window of his family's flat, watching the street below. His cricket bat leans against the wall. His friends are somewhere outside, he can hear them but he is not allowed to join them. Not today. Not most days.

‘‘When I see my friends playing outside carefreely, I wish my mother would allow me too,’’ he said. ‘‘Sometimes I wish she were not home.’’

Aayan's mother, Kiran Kafle, has her reasons. A few months ago, her son was injured while playing outside and left alone with a wound on his head while the neighbours who were present did nothing. ‘‘They left my kid all alone and told him to go away,’’ she said. ‘‘I don't like this society. They have problems with children playing outside. They complain about noise the minute children are out.’’

When children do manage to gather in the lane, she said, neighbours have gone as far as confiscating their cricket bats and balls—holding them ransom for days to ensure silence. So Kafle keeps Aayan inside, walks him to school in the morning, delivers his lunch at noon and picks him up in the afternoon. ‘‘I walk back and forth thrice already,’’ she said. ‘‘And as a housewife, I have to cook dinner on time. I cannot always take him to play.’’

The nearest option she knows of ‘‘Madan Bhandari Park’’, offers little comfort. ‘‘However, it is only good for adults who want to sit and talk,’’ she said. ‘‘It is not child-friendly. There is no space for children to run.’’

Aayan's story is not unusual. Across Kathmandu, a generation of children is growing up in a city that has no designated place for them—hemmed in by construction, scolded out of lanes and pavements, and handed a phone in place of the space their bodies and minds need. What is emerging, say experts, is a planning failure and compounding mental health crisis—one that is difficult to name precisely because children themselves cannot fully articulate what they are missing.

According to a report published by the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority, only about 2.3 percent of Kathmandu Valley's land is allocated to public open space, far below the 15 to 20 percent recommended by urban planners globally.

A study by the Kathmandu Valley Development Authority (KDVA) found 887 public open spaces across the Valley. Of these, Kathmandu district has 488, Lalitpur has 346, and Bhaktapur has 53 public parks and other open spaces. But the number obscures more than it reveals. These spaces are neither evenly distributed nor designed with children in mind. The children paying the price for that gap are largely invisible in the policy discussions that perpetuate it.

A few kilometres away, at Tyanglaphant in Kritipur — on the edge of the city where Tribhuvan University's sprawling campus provides a rare patch of open ground — the picture is slightly different.

Saraswati Paudel, a mother of two, has come to depend on the university grounds for her children's outdoor time. It is not a park. It is not designed for children. But it is open, and that is enough. ‘‘When my children return home from a day full of outdoor activities, they become consciously aware of their hunger,’’ she said. ‘‘But when they stay at home on their phones, they feel annoyed when I ask them to eat. They are completely unaware of their appetite.’’

Even here, on the outskirts of the city with relatively more space, Paudel cannot leave her children unsupervised. ‘‘Even with the provided space, leaving children free to play comes with a risk of road accidents, or even kidnapping,’’ she said. ‘‘Persistent supervision has become an escalating concern.’’

Her children are among the fortunate ones. For most children in central Kathmandu, a university ground is not an option. There is simply nowhere to go.

Fourteen-year-old Shaalin Dhoj Thapa, who lives in a dense neighbourhood with few open spaces, has already quietly adjusted his expectations. Cricket is his favourite game. At school, he plays with friends during breaks. Once home, he shifts to guitar and his phone—not because he prefers them, but because outside, there is no room. When he does attempt to play cricket near his home, the ball frequently breaks a neighbour's glass. The scolding follows.

When asked what a perfect outdoor space would look like, his answer was spare. ‘‘We do not need advanced equipment,’’ he said. ‘‘We just need an open space.’’ He paused. ‘‘But everywhere, there's just houses.’’

The consequences of that absence, while difficult to quantify, are visible to those who work closely with children.

Nikita Shakya, a psychosocial counsellor, said the pattern she observes is less about dramatic breakdowns and more about a slow erosion. Children who spend long hours without outdoor engagement, she said, tend to create an insular world, particularly through online gaming, and their social skills deteriorate. ‘‘In children where parental involvement is low, the child creates their own world in online gaming. They become isolated, and issues appear in their social life,” she said. They tend to regulate neither their language nor their impulses well.

‘‘Based on exposure to TikTok and online gaming, I've seen children speaking very fast, using inappropriate language at a very young age,’’ she said. ‘‘Some studies relate online gaming to aggression—a need for dominance, a desire for control.’’ The effects spill into classrooms and homes alike.

She has a specific concern about what sustained indoor, screen-mediated childhoods produce over time. ‘‘Digital platforms provide instant gratification, but real-life experiences develop patience,’’ she said. ‘‘Children are missing out on life skills, which lowers their resilience.’’

School psychologist Priyanka Chaguthi points to an even earlier developmental window being lost. ‘‘A particular phase of human development—early childhood—prominently demands physical activities,’’ she said. ‘‘In this period, it is extremely important for them to explore outside, playing with nature and mato (earth). The loss is compounding: children who are never introduced to outdoor play do not come to miss it. ‘‘To reminisce and demand going outside, children must experience it first,’’ she said. ‘‘Lost in the digital era, they have not sensed the necessity of being out in nature.’’

At Khushi Children's Park in Naxal—one of the few spaces in Kathmandu built specifically for children by Maharaja the Royal Casino—operations team member Utsav Joshi spends most days simply watching. Children climb structures, work their way through tunnels and return again and again to the treehouse. ‘‘It fills me with joy to know that they have a space to play,’’ he said.

What Joshi observes on weekends underscores what experts describe: ‘‘Children are noticeably more excited on weekends than on weekdays,’’ he said. ‘‘Schools can be a primary hub for socialisation, but parks offer a complementary and nurturing space during weekends.’’

But Khushi Park also illustrates the limits of what currently exists. Limited financial resources constrain what such spaces can offer. ‘‘The government's priorities influence the quality of the environment provided for children's holistic development,’’ Joshi notes. The park exists despite the system, not because of it.

Why does a city of nearly four million people—the capital of a country that ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990—have almost no designated space for its youngest residents?

Apil KC, a Nepali urban planner currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, has spent years asking that question. His answer is blunt.

‘‘Honestly, planning in Nepal doesn't consider children, elderly, or pregnant women at all,’’ he said. ‘‘Look at overhead bridges, can a child or elderly person use them? No. But we keep building them. Our planning is centred around able-bodied adults.’’

KC, who previously worked as a planning consultant on projects with local governments, the World Bank and UNDP across Nepal, said the failure is not primarily one of resources or land. ‘‘It is not about lack of land or money,’’ he said. ‘‘It is about mindset.’’

He is critical of the central policy framework itself. At the national level, housing and real estate projects are required to allocate around five to six percent of land as open space but in practice, that provision is routinely subverted. ‘‘Often these spaces are fragmented: small leftover unusable pieces like slopes, wetlands or awkward plots,’’ he said. ‘‘Even if five ropani [0.25 hectares] is allocated, it is often scattered and not practical. The approach to open space is very weak.’’

The problem extends to how existing public spaces are managed. Tundikhel, one of Kathmandu's largest open grounds, is fenced. Ratna Park charges an entry fee. Singha Durbar, which could function as one of the city's most significant urban open spaces, remains entirely inaccessible to the public. ‘‘Fencing Tundikhel makes no sense,’’ KC said. ‘‘Charging money to enter Ratna Park also feels wrong, it is like charging people for breathing.’’

He describes a fundamental conflict in how authorities conceive of public space. ‘‘The government's mentality is to enclose everything,’’ he said. ‘‘This reflects a more controlling system. In democratic countries, open spaces are truly open—like parks in New York. In Kathmandu, we have not reached that stage.’’

When he designed a park in Dang, he deliberately omitted a boundary wall. The municipality overruled him and insisted on enclosing it and on charging entry fees. ‘‘I strongly opposed that,’’ he said. ‘‘Public spaces should remain open. If people feel ownership, they take care of it.’’

The contrast with cities that have made children central to urban planning is stark.

In Bogotá, Colombia, the city's Ciclovía programme closes major roads to cars every Sunday, creating safe corridors for children and families to move freely through the city. Similarly, in Ghent, Belgium, child-friendliness has been embedded into the municipality's planning DNA—a dedicated team works across departments to ensure that regeneration projects, new streets and public spaces are designed with children's movement and play in mind.

These are not wealthy anomalies. UN-Habitat recommends that 45 to 50 percent of urban land be allocated to streets and open public spaces for a city to be considered healthy and liveable. The question is not whether Kathmandu can afford to meet that standard. It is whether it has decided to.

KC does not think the decision has been made or even seriously considered. ‘‘Parents themselves are not demanding this, which is another major issue,’’ he said. ‘‘People don't even realise open space is their right.’’

He is equally critical of the way proposals for urban improvements tend to become overcomplicated during implementation. ‘‘Government officers often overcomplicate projects for budgets and commissions,’’ he said. ‘‘We don't need museums or large structures right now. We just need open parks. Plant trees, create walking spaces, let people gather.’’ He added, ‘’Right now we are at zero. We don't need advanced planning, we need basic open spaces first.’’

If a ward office wanted to act tomorrow, KC said, there is nothing legally stopping it—provided it has access to public land. Financially, he argues, open space is among the cheapest possible investments a local government can make. ‘‘Open space doesn't need infrastructure,’’ he said. ‘‘Tundikhel or Ratna Park could be opened immediately without any major investment. Let people use the space—that is enough.’’

What is missing in his assessment is not capacity. It is will and the political pressure that might produce it.

‘‘Only when people demand it consistently, change might happen,’’ he said.

Back in Koteshwar, Kiran Kafle is not thinking in those terms. She is thinking about dinner, and the three trips she makes daily and the wound her son came home with months ago that she cannot quite stop thinking about. She takes Aayan to a temple nearby when she can. There is a small open patch of ground there, where he can move. It is not a park, but people gather there to play.

‘‘Isn't it their age to play and have fun?’’ she said. ‘‘If not now, then when?’’