KARACHI, Aug 19: Karachi has gone from being a poor-friendly city to one subservient to the demands of the market and global capital. If this trend continues, the rich-poor divide in the metropolis will grow, resulting in the further ghettoisation of the city and increasing instability.

Renowned architect and planner Arif Hasan said this on Wednesday while delivering the keynote address at a seminar titled ‘Karachi our city: visioning for an urban revolution’. The seminar — held at the NED’s city campus — was organised by the NED University of Engineering and Technology and Shehri-CBE, a non-governmental organisation.

“The Karachi Strategic Development Plan 2020 (KSDP 2020) is based on the needs of the market economy and attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) as well as devolution and mega-projects,” said Mr Hasan, as he discussed the various development plans prepared for Karachi — before and after partition — along with KSDP 2020, the current master plan.

“Devolution has been promoted to allow cities the freedom to borrow. The planning paradigm has changed. It is fuelled by global capital,” he added. The senior planner observed that though public-private partnerships were gaining currency, “the public is completely subservient to the private”. He said that in 2005-06, banks had lent around $1.5 billion for car loans; this money, he said, could have been used to build a massive number of proper housing units.

Arif Hasan termed this the “neo-liberal urban development paradigm”. He said the city’s planners wanted to build a “world-class city; however, there was no clear definition of what a “world-class city” was. He said symbols of the new development regime included iconic architecture, such as the city’s KPT Fountain, while a city had to be “branded” and host signature events.

Other symbols of this new order, he noted, were flyovers, high-rises and malls, termed “investment-friendly infrastructure”. Arif Hasan said that “projects have replaced planning”, adding that global capital had been desperately looking for a home and was very comfortable thriving in states like Pakistan, which had weak law enforcement.

“The repercussions of this are that the rich-poor divide will [widen] while there will be an increase in gated communities, a removal of hawkers and the closing of multi-class public space. Karachi cannot grow anymore. Planning should respect ecology and the natural environment.”

At the outset of his lecture, Mr Hasan said that though Karachi was one of the best planned cities in south and south-east Asia — better planned than Mumbai or Phnom Penh — this would not be the case in five to six years.

He said that planning was fundamentally a political act determined on the basis of ideology or compromise between powerful interest groups. He termed the Karachi Master Plan 1975-1985 “a very comprehensive plan”. Supervised by the United Nations, it could not be implemented and was not given legal cover. As a result, the informal sector and mafias expanded. All work on the plan was stopped in 1979, apart from bulk water and roads’ projects.

“If the plan had been implemented we would have been living in a different city.”

‘Citizens not heard’

Earlier, Shehri general-secretary Amber Alibhai delivered the welcome address. She said that as people’s opinion had not been honoured in the planning stage, litigation resulted over various projects and developments. “The city managers do not take the people’s right to know seriously. Why are citizens not taken on board during the decision making process?”

Urban planner and Shehri member Farhan Anwar, while defining the objectives of the seminar, said that Karachi was a very decentralised city, controlled by over 20 civic agencies. “Where does the common citizen stand in the whole process? Who is benefiting and who is losing out?”

He said that though Karachi had seen several planning interventions before and after partition, the process failed because of an absence of continuity, absence of implementing and financing mechanisms, lack of a political mandate and lack of stakeholder consultation.

‘Projects keep popping up’

“Projects keep popping up, but do they fit in logically according [to a plan]? They happen all over the place. Why are master plans never given legal sanction? Do we want to promote ad-hocism?” he asked.

Mr Anwar said policies and plans served special interest groups, targeted short-term gains and had a narrow focus rather than a holistic urban outlook. He also pointed out that legislation specific to the needs of cities was required.

In his concluding remarks, Dr Noman Ahmed, chairman of the NED’s department of architecture and planning, said that planning was a continuous process and that without a planning agency, proper development would be very difficult. He also observed that the city would continue to face difficulties until the issue of local bodies was settled.