KARACHI, July 10: The city government and its associated land agencies may impose a moratorium on large residential development projects for high-income groups, well-informed sources have told Dawn.

This step may be taken in light of the city government’s Karachi Strategic Master Plan 2020 (KSMP), which estimates that the projected demand in 2020 for high-income residential land – 20,000 acres, including circulation areas and associated sub-division use – is entirely satisfied by the current supply.

In terms of the projected land demand for groups of low and middle income, the KSMP states: “Almost half of the projected demand for low and middle income residential land (80,000 acres) is satisfied by the projects in the pipelines (36,000 acres).”Forecasting that the city needs to expand by only about one-third of the current built-up area of 267,000 acres, the KSMP states that after taking into account the projects that are already in the pipelines, an estimated 90,000 acres of new development are required by 2020.

With reference to the city’s projected housing requirement, the KSMP states: “With 1,60,000 households expected to be absorbed through densification, the balance [of] 1,776,000 new households must be accommodated in new expansion areas at the urban fringe.

According to Dawn’s sources, the master plan divides 1.62 million new households in three 5-year phases between three socio-economic groups, with relevant average plot sizes. Since some of the new expansion areas will include apartment blocks or other forms of multi-unit housing, the calculations are reported as being liberal and the actual land required for development over the period covered by the plan may have been over-estimated.

In the section entitled ‘Total Future Urban Land Requirements,’ the required residential area is converted into new residential / mixed use areas by taking into account proportional area requirements such as circulation areas, neighbourhood commercial and institution areas, as well as open spaces. Regional commercial and industrial needs are also included, which brings the new expansion areas to a required total of 145,000 acres.

The total area of the predominantly residential projects which have not yet been built up is approximately 107,000 hectares (264,402 acres). Of this, 60,000 acres – 24,000 acres for high-income groups and 36,000 acres for low to medium income groups – remain to be allocated to end users, say the KSMP 2020.

Referring to concerns of city growth and urbanisation, sources pointed out that the actual trend of densification in many town municipal administrations is high because of the construction of additional floors in a large number of buildings. Therefore, the wholesale re-development of key roads to facilitate higher density use remains a viable means of increasing the intensity of development and limiting infrastructure development costs.

Projects in the pipelines