The problem with “transforming” Karachi

This week, the federal government officially unveiled the Karachi Transformation Plan (KTP). At first glance, the Rs1.1 trillion initiative looks like a concerted effort to address the city’s housing, municipal, and transport needs. Unfortunately, despite an attempt to build stakeholder consensus, cracks have already begun to appear in the Center-Sindh partnership at the heart of the KTP. But aside from the somewhat predictable squabbling over budget needs and appointing personnel, the plan itself is short-sighted.

While couched in the optimistic language of “transforming” Karachi, the KPT offers little in terms of a technically targeted agenda to achieve itsstated goal. Instead, rather than using the havoc created by a record monsoon season to reevaluate the city’s problems with a fine-toothed comb, the plan blindly emphasizes the need to complete old projects like the K-IV and Karachi Circular Railway.

The roots of this myopia lie in the so-called master planning approach that has characterized the development of postcolonial Karachi. From the Eurocentric, modernizing impulses of the 1952 Karachi Master Plan to the “world-class city” aspirations of the 2007 Karachi Strategic Development Plan, each master planning iteration has proposed large-scale housing and infrastructure projects. But each plan has also been a stalled exercise in urban metamorphoses. Why?

Planning failure in Karachi is a consequence of two factors. First, the city’s unique importance to regional, national, and, indeed, international politics means that implementing master plans has been a historical quagmire. Given the motely cru of competing actors and interests in Karachi, it is no surprise that evenwell-designed projects like the Korangi housing scheme of the 1960s failed because of a lack of follow through (Korangiwas abandoned after land was allotted for housing -leaving resettled families without adequate municipal services and no choice but to move elsewhere).

The more significant problem, however, is the inherent unsuitability of the project-based master planning approach in cities like Karachi.

Master planning emerged in 19th century Europe butgained popularity in Asia during the 20th century as postcolonial governments sought to use their cities to institute political order and promote economic development. Looking to the urban north for guidance, planners saw large-scale projects – such as those dealing with sanitation, water supply, and housing – as an excellent way to achieve these goals. But, whereas cities like Paris were constantly zoned, demarcated, and planned around the gradual suburbanization of its peripheries and a decreasing population density throughout the 20th century, Karachi exploded into existence after Partition and continues to grow.

Cities like Paris were constantly zoned, demarcated, and planned around the gradual suburbanization of its peripheries and a decreasing population density throughout the 20th century, Karachi exploded into existence after Partition and continues to grow

This means that a project-based planning approach lifted from the experience of slow growing and even shrinking European cities is incapable of handling urbanization levels in countries like Pakistan. This is clearly demonstrable from the case of Karachi where urban sprawl has laid bare planner’s incorrect assumptions about the city’s population growth. Take, for example, the 1952 Karachi Master Plan drafted by Swedish consultants Merz Rendell Vatten. One of the main proposals of the plan was to create settlements around the Lyari River as a long-term solution for the city’s post-partition housing problems. This was predicated on the idea that the city would grow to a maximum size of 3 million by the year 2000. Post-partition migration and green revolution-led urbanization meant Karachi reached this size around 1970, effectively rendering the Lyari settlements moot. The story is the same for projects like the Metroville housing initiative from the 1974 Karachi Development Plan and the Greater Karachi Bulk Water Supply – a decades spanning, multiple-phase project that has consistently underestimate future demand for potable water. Whether or not these projects were implemented is beside the point that they were based on extremely conservative assumptions about urban growth.

One wonders, then, how the KTP will fare given not only Karachi’s status as one of the fastest growing cities in the world but also the plan’s faith in city-wide housing, transport, and municipal service projects – projects that require accurately forecasting both future urbanization and suburbanization. In some ways the KTP is far more problematic than its predecessors because while earlier plans were blind to the sheer scale of urban migration to come, the proposed plan digs into the past and emphasizes the need to complete projects that are likely to be outdated. For instance, the KPT’s first priority is completing the K-IV water supply scheme, a project based on 18-year-old assumptions about future demand for potable water. There is no doubt that Karachi will benefit from the additional 650 million gallons/day proposed by the K-IV, assuming this increase in bulk supply is distributed through a functioning water infrastructure. But to say that completing the K-IV will transform Karachi by solving its water crisis – and that too in no more than three years as outlined by the plan- is simply out of step with reality.

Certainly, the KTP might promote much needed consensus and compromise between the federal and provincial governments, thus charting a politically viable path forward for Karachi. But stakeholder consensus alone is not enough given the monumental and often ignored technical challenge that the City of Lights poses for planners. Setting Karachi on the path to sustainable growth requires not only the political will to implement planning decision, but a technocratic revaluation of the city’s planning practices as well. Without this dual strategy, it is likely that Karachi will need another transformation a few years down the line.

Political scientist and writer based in the United States. Analyzes issues surrounding urban planning and redevelopment in South Asia