KARACHI: The Karachi Development Authority hosted the first Open House event for the Greater Karachi Regional Plan 2047 at Frere Hall, marking a crucial step towards developing a comprehensive scheme for the city’s future growth and uplift over the coming months.

Citizens were encouraged to participate by providing feedback on the presentations displayed at the public exhibition, either through direct discussions with team members or by submitting comments via a feedback form and dropping it in the designated comments box.

Notably, despite the event’s significance, none of the city’s prominent political leaders or civil rights activists attended the “public exhibition” to provide their input, suggestions or proposals for the city’s development and uplift.

Commissioned from an international consultant, Dar Al-Handasah, with the support from Pakistani consultants, the plan will be developed over a 24-month period starting from December 2024.

Dar Al-Handasah Country Manager Rami Beydoun told Dawn at the exhibition that the upcoming plan would build upon the foundation of the now-expired Karachi Strategic Development Plan (KSDP) 2020, addressing a wide range of challenges across social, economic, and environmental spheres to create a comprehensive roadmap for the city’s future.

He said the development of the regional plan would go through five stages over a 24-month period. “We are in the first phase of inception and data collection and situation analysis would start in the second phase,” he added.

Dar’s Principal Urban Planner David Gundry said that four major surveys — household, environmental, transportation and land use— would be conducted shortly to gather data on living conditions and demographics.

The urban planner said the sample size of the survey was approximately 34,547 households and it would be conducted by 80 enumerators and 16 supervisors.

He said the plan would be designed to be implementable, but would also need to be adaptable, flexible and responsive to future change.

Mr Gundry said the public exhibition marked just the beginning of the planning process, and they were eager to gather input from a diverse range of citizens on what changes they deemed essential for Karachi’s development.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2025