KARACHI: Under the scorching midday sun, a small group of union committee members huddles with urban planners from the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) in a narrow street of UC-3 of Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town, clipboards in hand, noting down complaints of residents and infrastructure gaps.

Children weave past them, with potholes gaping underfoot, and a rusted water pipe leaking steadily nearby — quiet reminders of the many civic challenges that have long plagued this part of the city.

In a “ground-breaking” initiative, the administration of Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town has launched a comprehensive master planning project for one of its 13 union committees, becoming the first in Karachi’s local government set-up to take such a step.

Partnering with the renowned OPP, the town aims to map and assess critical urban systems — from drainage and water supply to sanitation, education, and healthcare infrastructure.

Officials hope this data-driven approach will not only identify core issues, but also help calculate the budget needed for long-term solutions.

In collaboration with Orangi Pilot Project, the town aims to map and assess critical urban systems like drainage, water supply, sanitation, healthcare units, etc

The UC, which is comprised of developed areas and katchi abadis, can serve as a blueprint for other towns across Karachi — a city which lacks a coherent urban planning.

If successful, the initiative can set a much-needed precedent for localised, participatory urban planning — a model the rest of Karachi desperately needs but has historically lacked.

“Karachi’s problems are deeply local, but our solutions have always been generic,” says Dr Fuad Ahmed, chairman of Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town, explaining why the administration chose to break with precedent and develop a detailed master plan at the UC level. “You can’t send engineers from city headquarters who’ve never walked the streets of these neighbourhoods and expect them to get the designs right.”

He believes that this shift to hyperlocal planning, with the support of community-focused institutions like the OPP, is long overdue.

“This is the first time we’re not only listening to residents, but documenting their needs with the seriousness they deserve,” he says.

“It’s not just about patching potholes or unblocking sewers — it’s about understanding what each neighbourhood lacks, what it needs, and how much it will cost to fix it sustainably.”

That need for detailed understanding is echoed on the ground by Ashraf Sagar, heading the OPP team for the Gulshan-i-Iqbal Town initiative.

Based on his field observations in UC-3 Jamali Colony, he paints a stark picture of an area long neglected despite its centrality.

“Jamali Colony lies in the heart of Karachi and yet looks nothing like it should,” he says. “It’s an unplanned katchi abadi where streets are broken, the drainage system is chaotic, and even the underpass drainage box connected to the Lyari Expressway is clogged with garbage. There’s an urgent need for proper cleaning and installation of a trunk sewer line to channel storm water effectively, not just during monsoons, but year-round.”

Mr Sagar also points out the irony that, despite rising land values in the area and its symbolic significance — the late Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali once had a home here — no master plan has ever been developed for the UC, not even since 2001.

“This makes the current effort historic. For the first time since independence, we are planning for this area not as a burden but as a vital part of the city,” he says.

With political will, community engagement, and a data-led approach finally intersecting, the Gulshan-i-Iqbal pilot project stands as a hopeful departure from Karachi’s history of fragmented planning. If the blueprint proves successful, experts believe it might just light the way for the rest of the city — one map, one plan, and one neighbourhood at a time.

For Aquila Ismail, director at the OPP, this collaboration is a natural extension of the organisation’s decades-long work with Karachi’s informal settlements. But she emphasises that it is also a challenge of scale and approach.

“The OPP has been working in katchi abadis since 1985 using a community-based approach,” she says. “We treat the UC as a functional unit — involving elected representatives and youth from the area in everything from base mapping to infrastructure design. This builds local capacity and ensures that whatever is planned actually works on the ground.”

She is critical of the conventional methods still employed by municipal authorities.

“Institutions like KMC or K-Electric need to work off office drawings that have little to do with the realities on the ground,” she says.

“That’s why their designs often fail. What we are doing in Gulshan-i-Iqbal is documenting every detail from the street level. You can’t rely on satellite imagery or GPS alone — real urban planning has to be rooted in real-world knowledge.”

According to Ms Ismail, this initiative in UC3 is not just a test case — it’s a model.

“If it succeeds, it shows that change can begin with just one union committee. That’s the scale Karachi needs to adopt — one UC at a time, with people at the centre,” she says.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2025