Planning and managing urbanization is one of the prime tasks of any government. Cities have rapidly bulged over the last few decades. Inadequate planning, lack of foresight and deviation from laid down rules has caused many cities to fall into chaos, while better vision has let other cities to absorb the increased pressure of urbanization in an unruffled manner.
Cities devoid of town planning and implementation apparatus ultimately end up creating hardship for society and affecting the quality of people’s life, which leads to a general feeling of negativity in the environment. Hence, the citizens’ (and nation’s) spirit and morale spiral downwards. Depression, corruption and crime find their foothold in such a chaotic environment.
Walking down Oxford Street in London, one sees what he is not used to see in Pakistan — properly made and wide pavements. Each pavement, on either side, is wider than our average roads. The large pavements enable the place to acquire a carnival-like atmosphere. There is enough place for two-way human traffic and even for cozy roadside cafes. There are shoppers and window shoppers thronging the street, free in spirit and mobility. Both kinds of freedoms are restricted in our country. Freedom of spirit is largely dependent on social factors. Freedom of mobility is the product of civic facilities.
Pavements are every street’s companion (no matter how narrow the street may be), wherever they may be. In Karachi, except for some streets in Saddar (planned under the Raj) and a few other main roads, you can find what you can, in all honesty, call a proper footpath. While one can expect to see road repairs once in his lifetime, a broken footpath is never mended. Open manholes (conveniently located) on the footpaths and ubiquitous encroachments do not help the state of affairs either.
Would you not find spring in your feet if you have a neat pedestrian path laid before you, where people can walk on without the fear of bumping into each other and being run over by moving vehicles? It will immensely improve the lives of the masses. In Karachi, pavements have no serious place in urban planning.
The transportation system in the West also stands in stark contrast to what passes off here as the transportation system. The buses there are comfortable and follow traffic rules meticulously. When you step out of a bus, your wallet is still in the back pocket, your shirt is not torn and there is no material change in your appearance. Buses stop at bus stops only, which are conveniently and frequently located on all main roads. Therefore, climbing and alighting the bus carry no physical danger. Everyone one is seated. Bus numbers are placed loud and clear on the front, along with the name of destinations. Maps pasted on bus stops are also user-friendly. And I have not mentioned the underground railroad here at all.
In Karachi, a family’s idea of recreation is eating junk food — we ape the West in all the wrong things. Hence, enjoyment for us is restricted to eating and accumulation of fat. If a society’s greatest recreation is merely eating junk food then that society is likely to be unhealthy, both in physical and mental terms. Are people to blame? Not entirely. Where else can they find recreation? Have we preserved our historical sites and museums? Are our amusement parks worth paying a visit? Can women go there freely without being ogled at?
The fact is that heritage has no value in officialdom. For us, history has no need to be preserved. Preservation means making it available for public scrutiny. Then it cannot be tampered with as per the whims of the governing class or the establishment. Museums have been reduced to Gothic structures that lie in desolation. Public or amusement parks are substandard and inadequate in number. Besides, they are not the places where one will like to take one’s wife and sisters. Some parks in posh areas have indeed been developed but they are a drop in the ocean.
Yes, we do have the beach. A filthy, garbage-filled stretch of sand which leads you to greasy, polluted water. We cannot even take care of places given to us by nature for free.
In London, I noticed a profound interest in life itself. Life pulsated with vigour. There was no mere-survival state of mind. To a large extent, it was the overall setup that facilitated this infusion of positive energy. Give people the infrastructure and places of recreation and their mental health will improve, and society will start producing achievers rather than losers. Presently, our life has been reduced to mere motions of limbs, devoid of any cheerfulness. Our hearts have become indifferent.
We have lost our theatres and our cinemas to commercialism. Literature and the habit of reading is replaced with cable TV and computers. Our identity is lost. We seem to exist at a subhuman level. Our intellect, mannerism, bearing, pleasure-seeking ability, laughter and ethics are all at subhuman level. We use our mind up to the subsistence level only, hence we have stopped growing. In fact, we are undergoing retardation. Degeneration is evident with each new generation. We have deteriorated so much that even if trash cans are placed in all public and private places, the trash will still be thrown outside rather than inside the garbage drum. But that doesn’t mean that there is thus no need to bother having a dustbin around. We need to upgrade our minds and a healthy civic infrastructure and environment will be of great help. Inadequate amenities and tattered civic setup is one of the prime reasons for deterioration in society’s behaviour. In Pakistan, privileged and elite go on holidays and official tours to see the beautiful world out there. Yet, they bring back no lessons of infrastructure development.
Candidly speaking, many areas are not hampered by availability of funds. Instead, there is paucity of vision and intellectual depth on our part. Nations are built through libraries and, yet, our cities and colleges cannot claim to have well-stock a library. No university worth its name is even close to be called a centre of learning.
Building a nation requires valuing and preserving your heritage, providing learning, as well as recreation opportunities for everyone and providing infrastructure conducive to physical and mental health. I do not recall any government which had the above three points in its priority list. Give masses opportunity to live comfortably, learn, enjoy and grow intellectually, and the nation’s problems will start vanishing. Nation building is not a buzz word. It is a goal. Its accomplishment requires a plan and an unselfish, farsighted vision. We are not even at the planning stage.
Planning and managing urbanization is one of the prime tasks of any government. Cities have rapidly bulged over the last few decades. Inadequate planning, lack of foresight and deviation from laid down rules has caused many cities to fall into chaos, while better vision has let other cities to absorb the increased pressure of urbanization in an unruffled manner.
