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August 4, 2002
REVIEW: A capital is born
WHEN I took Orestes Yakas’ Islamabad: the birth of a capital in my hands I was certain that it would be like other books on architecture crowded with tedious details and maps of the acropolis and buildings. Instead I discovered the relics of our national heritage. I felt like an archeologist excavating the crust and unearthing the history of the creation of the Dynapolis.
The birth of Pakistan was accompanied with many problems related to the administration of the infant country. The most important of the problems was the selection of the new capital. Many Pakistanis still object to the selection of Islamabad as the capital of Pakistan.
Islamabad: the birth of a capital is a reply to these objections which continue to plague the minds of Pakistanis. The history of the development of Islamabad establishes the suitability of the site for the purpose of building a new capital for a country which was divided into two wings and was flooded with people migrating from India with their ethnic, religious and social identities and economic compulsions. Building a new capital for such a fusion of diverse races was the challenge of the time.
Though many solutions were proposed but none was feasible. The master plan to transform the metropolitan area of Karachi into the capital did not propose any solution to the problem of building up a capital in a city with limited economic and land resources. This was the main reason why the leaders continued to explore alternative solutions which focused on the selection of another site.
One idea was to create the capital as a twin city to Karachi at a distance of about fifteen or twenty miles from the old town centre. The interest of the merchant class was the key determining factor in this suggestion. The experts were of the opinion that the new capital would benefit from the existing amenities in Karachi and the port would provide new facilities for the development of the new capital.
According to Yakas, the Pakistan government set up several committees to look into the problems obstructing the construction of the federal capital. However no suggestion was acceptable. The solutions proposed by the members of the committees failed to improve the condition of Karachi, which, at the time, was the temporary capital of the country.
In 1959 President Ayub Khan took a significant measure to step up the creation of a new capital. A new committee was formed under the chairmanship of Gen Azam Khan to look into the matter in a scientific way. During the session Gen Yahya Khan was appointed chairman of the commission and nine committees were set up with the participation of experts from all disciplines related to the planning of the new town.
The government also appointed C.A. Doxiadis as the advisor to the special commission investigating the location of the new capital. He presented a report analyzing all the problems and giving suitable suggestions. He also designed the master plan.
But why was Islamabad chosen as the site for the new capital? Though many people have tried to unveil this mystery but only Yakas is able to give a plausible answer to the question. Though the people, including government officials, representatives of foreign agencies and the press were against the idea of setting up a new capital at Islamabad, the CDA under the guidance of Doxiadis insisted on choosing this site. It felt that the cities in this region were developed in a haphazard manner. The people and cars, residence and factories, and shops and schools were grouped together chaotically and they destroyed the order and symmetry of a city’s structure. This despoiled the natural beauty and environment.
Islamabad and its Ecumenopolis branch were well endowed with natural and artificial resources which any city of the future could possibly dream of. The objections against the new capital were basically rooted in ethnic prejudices and the interest of the industrialists. The resistance faced by the CDA caused it to adjust the construction of the new capital somewhat. Yet the original master plan was praised by many heads of states that had visited the site of the new capital.
Based on about 500 reports issued by the CDA and written by a professor of architecture, the book is a tour de force. The language and style is not of a historian but an artist painting the entire plan on the canvas of a reader’s mind with simple words. Kamil Khan Mumtaz’s comment that ‘the book will have a definite appeal for planners and historians’ seems an underestimation. The book will interest all generations of Pakistanis who will be proud of the great task undertaken with limited financial resources to create this wonder in town planning.
Writer’s email: lubna_shamimkhan@hotmail.com
Islamabad: the birth of a capital
By Orestes Yakas
Oxford University Press, 5 Bangalore Town, Sharae Faisal, Karachi-75350 Tel: 021-4529025
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net
ISBN 0-19-579533-4
162pp. Rs395
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