Development Plan for Karachi
Karachi’s new master plan must take into consideration a whole world of local and global, social, economic, and technological change to address the myriad and complex issues plaguing the city.
Karachi has had many master plans and, from what one gathers, another one is being constructed. None of the previous development plans have been implemented or even completed on the drawing boards. Their authors claim that this is because the city changes faster than the plan’s implementation.
This is true because much of Karachi has developed in an ad-hoc manner, except for its formally developed areas, which mainly consist of elite and upper-class residential and commercial settlements and are planned based on European theory and practice. This is not only in terms of physical planning but also of a societal vision of how people should live, relate to each other, educate their children, and manage their health.
Well, this has not worked out too well, as social and demographic conditions changed, but by-laws, zoning regulations, and anti-poor bias in planning and policy remained the same as were gifted to us by our colonial masters.
As a result, 60 percent of Karachi households live and work in informal settlements, which try to copy the formal sector design but with much higher densities, smaller lots of plots, narrower streets, and up to six to 10 persons per room. In addition, these settlements have no parks, schools, and specially planned health spaces.
Karachi’s new master plan must take into consideration a whole world of local and global, social, economic, and technological change in order to address the myriad and complex issues plaguing the city
To plan a city like Karachi, it is important to understand how it is functioning at the time of planning and, luckily, there are a lot of studies that can help us in doing this. Much of these studies were prepared for the previous master plan on various aspects of the city. In the previous two to three decades, academic institutions and NGOs have also added to this knowledge. This article uses the knowledge that has been developed by these studies and the media to identify the needs of Karachi’s citizens and how they can be catered to by creating a vision for the city, as well as suggesting a process for implementing that vision.
As said earlier, informal settlements contain over 60 percent of Karachi households. It is not possible that, by 2047, new additions to the city will be larger than what exists today. Therefore, the main task of any plan will be to retrofit and improve the existing settlements, and their social and physical infrastructure.
Retrofitting houses will require cross-ventilation, insulation, and the prevention of stagnant water within the house, as these are major causes of disease. Settlement retrofitting will also require the creation of open public spaces, schools, a community center, and sports areas. This can be provided by removing existing houses on a small scale and replacing them with ground plus three apartments for those houses that will be affected.
Easily accessible health facilities that are linked to a major hospital are also required, along with mobile clinics. The Union of International Architects, in its 2023 congress, also pointed out that one of the most problematic issues in healthcare is the difficult-to-reach location of health facilities, even in the developed world.
The previous plan’s vision was to turn Karachi into a world-class city, meaning that it would resemble a first-world city like Dubai, with high-rise buildings, malls, and light rail or BRT transportation built through direct foreign investment. This sounds good, but cities that have followed this formula have not been able to solve their transport problems, because of an increase in automobiles.