Construction practices

TODO

Afghanistan

Most houses in Afghanistan have external walls made of adobe, or clay/mud bricks. Such houses are extremely vulnerable to earthquakes and formed around 66.6% of the total housing stock of the country in 2016 (Afghanistan Living Conditions Survey 2017). While the vast majority of the Kuchi population (88%) resides in tents, the remaining Kuchi households mostly dwell in houses built of stones and mud, particularly in rural areas. A small but not insignificant proportion of the houses in the urban areas of Afghanistan are constructed using concrete and fired clay brick walls, and these make up around 15% of the total housing stock of the country.

In Kabul city, 47.1%, or nearly half of the houses are adobe structures, with unreinforced clay brick masonry and unreinforced stone masonry with mud mortar comprising a further 27.4% and 12.8% respectively. Stone masonry structures using cement mortar and reinforced concrete structures formed 11 percent of the housing stock of the city. Around sixty blocks of Soviet-style microdistricts, or microrayons, were built in Kabul in the 1970s and 1980s, which consisted of homogenous multi-story cinder block apartment buildings.

Bangladesh

Bhutan

India

Nepal

Pakistan

The common wall materials used in residential construction as per the 2017 Census are summarized in the table below.

Wall material	Urban	Rural	Total
Baked bricks, blocks, and stone	85.76%	45.96%	58.46%
Unbaked bricks, mud	12.16%	44.69%	34.48%
Wood, bamboo	1.53%	7.20%	5.42%
Others	0.54%	2.14%	1.64%

As can be seen in the table above, masonry construction (with varying masonry unit types) are commonplace in Pakistan. However, the used of unbacked bricks or mud is primarily practiced in rural areas.

Data was available at the subnational level for urban and rural settlements separately.