GEORGE Burns, the comedian who generated laughter up to the age of 100 (much to be said for having a sense of humour), once wryly observed: “The secret of success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made!”

This is a recipe our politicians and bureaucrats love: while crafting devious schemes to line their own and their cronies’ pockets, they exude ‘sincerity’ by claiming that all being done is in the ‘supreme national interest’.

One such recent scam is the Sindh High Density Development Board Act 2010 promulgated in May last year. At the time, this column explained how, in 2008, the president of the republic had commissioned the Karachi (now Sindh) Building Control Authority (SBCA) to promote the construction of 100-storey high-rises to stimulate the flagging economies of the provincial cities.

The SBCA sprang into action: obtained 17 consultancy proposals from around the world, formed an advisory committee of 11 prominent architects who researched issues and submitted sensible recommendations (establish a supra Planning and Development Authority, designate limited low-rise/high-rise high-density zones based on urban-planning studies, create an Oversight Committee with minimum 50 per cent representation of citizens from professional, building, commerce and industry, academic and NGO fields), drafted three versions of a High Density Bill for Sindh, and finally had one passed based on a compromise basis — the governor (MQM) and the chief minister (PPP) would be at the helm of affairs.

Most of the architects’ recommendations were ignored or diluted. Besides the district nazim, the other seven board members were government-wallahs, none of them town-planners.

Similar arrogance (and short-sightedness) was displayed by the Sindh government earlier this year when it presented the Protection and Prohibition of Amenity Plots Bill authorising the Assembly (apparently full of urban planners) to decide which amenity plots were no longer needed and could be converted to residential/commercial use. It turned out to be a ploy to sponsor land-grabbing.

The detailed intent of this avaricious High Density Act 2011 was finally exposed with the notification last month of the Sindh High Density Development (Rules & Procedures) 2001.

Without technical studies of the urban areas involved, rules have been arbitrarily made to increase the amount of construction permitted. In high-density zones, residential plots will now be used for commercial and high-rise purposes by merely paying a fee (existing procedures only allow change of land-use on 28 designated roads, which Sepa has ruled require an entire road EIA study to protect the environment from degradation).

Numerous plots can now be amalgamated without any limitation of size, radically altering the character of residential neighbourhoods when, say, five 1,000 sq yd plots are combined to form a 5,000 sq yd plot. Height-related setbacks of buildings (required for light penetration) have been eliminated. Parking requirements are totally inadequate.

Allowable sizes of buildings on residential plots have been boosted by over eight times on plots between 3,000-5,000 sq yds and by over 12 times for plots over 5,000 sq yds. The corresponding demands of the building occupants for scarce water, fluctuating electricity, sewerage, gas, garbage collection, road traffic, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, police stations, and other amenities/facilities will swell by the same proportion.

In a number of landmark judgments, our Supreme Court has quoted the Encyclopedia Britannica on the social goals of modern city planning: orderly arrangement of areas: residential, business, industrial, etc; efficient system of circulation/transport; optimum standards: plot size, sunlight, green spaces, parking, building spacing; safe, sanitary and comfortable housing; recreation, schools and community services; water supply, sewerage, utilities and public services.

Further, analysing the interests of developers and builders (who some erroneously consider ‘stakeholders’ in the urban development process), Britannica goes on to say: “Zoning and sub-division controls. … It was realised [in the US], after bitter experience with suburban land speculations in the 1920s, that the interest of the owner and developer of raw land is sometimes temporary and purely financial, while the urban community must live with the results for generations afterward.”

A thorn in the side of builders/developers and their government patrons countrywide is the aerodrome-safeguarding requirements of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Within a radius of about 15km of an airport runway, and above an increasing height up to 155 metres (less than 40 stories), no obstruction can be erected. Consequently, proposed buildings within these limits have to obtain NOCs from the CAA before proceeding to other government approvals.

In Karachi, the three aerodromes at Jinnah International, Faisal and Mauripur Air Force bases have thrown a spanner into the works of many ambitious entrepreneurs, e.g., the 47-storey ‘I.T. Tower’ at Civic Centre became unviable in 2008 when the CAA approved only 38 floors.

There are movers and shakers in Pakistan whose plots in Karachi (which they wish to exploit to the maximum) fall within the affected radii of these aerodromes. Last week at a meeting convened at the presidency, CAA officials had to reluctantly insist that, firstly, even government buildings could not override these requirements, and secondly, the NOCs, under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, could not be issued by the SBCA. If this were done, international flights (the few that remain) would refuse to come to Karachi because of flight hazards.

A seminar in Karachi this past Thursday had a sizable group of architects, engineers, town-planners, environmentalists and concerned citizens recommending to the government that the urban-planning of Sindh’s cities be based on the original architects’ committee’s submissions, be carried out by master-planning experts not by a building control agency, be kept simple and realistic, be done at the local level and not by Islamabad, cater to all residents (especially the ever-increasing over 60 per cent katchi abadi groups) not just the two per cent super-rich, and be provided requisite utilities and physical/social infrastructure in advance.

As remarked one participant, we cannot build castles on dung heaps.

arfc@cyber.net.pk