Searching for Solutions
In the wake of
the Supreme Court decisions regarding the removal of ‘encroachments’ from the
old city and from the Right of Way (RoW) of the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR),
this troublesome urban development issue in Karachi was highlighted. A number
of views and concerns were raised from within civil society, the government and
other relevant stakeholders. They touched on a variety of interfacing
constructs attached to this phenomenon – social, political, legal, and
environmental to name the more obvious ones. Poor-friendly planning has never
been a priority in this city and it has a growing profile of urban inequity.
So, while what happened at Empress Market and what is presently happening along
the KCR RoW is deeply disturbing, it is not something new within the historical
context of the city. It will not be the last episode if solutions with a
‘temporary’ status attached are implemented – like communities have been
displaced, give them alternate space and shelter. That is not a sustainable
solution!
The critical
understanding that can be drawn from the legal orders and subsequent
developments is that there is no simple, one-dimensional solution to the
malaise that has afflicted this city. The root causes of the problem and the
cross-cutting factors, cause and effect relationships have to be understood,
unpacked and addressed, instead of treating the symptoms. It is feared that
unless such a holistic lens is applied, a viable and durable
solution would always remain elusive and this urban disease will mutate and
become even harder to suppress with the passage of time.
In order to
understand issues of ‘encroachment’ and ‘land use violations,’ we need to
analyse the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’
The first thread to consider in this complicated web of urban
mismanagement is the lack of sanctioning and non-implementation of any of the
master plans prepared for this city and the ever weakening writ of the state
and rule of law.
The master plans
had no legal sanction, leading to the ad hoc development of the city and
excessive use of the so-called official ‘discretion’ in the enactment and
implementation of urban development policies and actions. As a result, issues
in city planning have never been addressed holistically in an integrated
manner. As such, critical urban services like housing, public spaces, water and
sanitation, transportation and commercial growth have all suffered.
If we
categorise the type of ‘illegal’ constructions, encroachments and built
typologies that have been targeted – then they are either housing and shelter
or commercial. Let’s take housing first. Decision makers and service providers
in Karachi have never been able to successfully address the issue of social and
low income housing in Karachi. A number of efforts have failed owing to a
variety of reasons that include a failure to attract genuine buyers, absence of
provision of basic civic services such as water, power, transport, employment
and education – that convert a ‘house’ into a ‘housing’ project. Due to the
lack of financial support systems, instead of genuine buyers, land was invested
in by speculative real estate actors. Learning from successful community based
efforts such as the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) model never was a priority and
as such there was an unfortunate failure by the government to streamline such
models into a policy framework to increase their footprint.
The Sindh
Katchi Abadi Authority (SKAA), made to evaluate and regularise katchi
abadis (squatter settlements), was not able to sustain some good
progress made in the beginning. It is therefore no surprise that at present,
over 50 per cent of Karachiites live in informal settlements, which grow at
twice Karachi’s annual urban growth rate. Other estimates show that
the current demand for 80,000 housing units is met by a supply of only 30,000
units per year in the formal sector. The gap is made up for with the supply of
at least 32,000 housing units in katchi abadis annually (Hasan
2013). It is such katchi abadis that are among the ones that
are being demolished. So while the intent behind the legal order is noble and
legally also viable, given the ground realities, such encroachment removal
practices, in the absence of a sustainable social and low income housing vision
and plan can never lead to a workable solution.
If we look at
the way commercialisation of land parcels has taken place, sound planning
principles like creating decentralised district and neighbourhood-based
commercial districts and market spaces has not been followed. Instead what we
are now witnessing is a process of unregulated commercialisation of land
parcels in Karachi, primarily within the backdrop of the policy decision of the
City District Government Karachi (CDGK) to allow commercialisation of various
traffic corridors (17 traffic corridors in all) within the city, under the CDGK
Change of Land Use and Master Planning By-laws 2003, notified on February 12,
2004. This ‘ribbon commercialisation’ was in defiance to the opposing pleas of
planning experts. What has happened is piecemeal commercialisation, filtering
from the main traffic corridors into adjacent neighbourhoods, with extremely
damaging social and environmental consequences. Once such processes are rolled
out, issues with the ‘illegality’ of land use conversions are worked out
through a nexus of builders, regulating agencies, investors, elected
representatives etc.
Institutions of land development and regulation have been
politicised, with rampant corruption and rent seeking, so that instead of
curtailing practices of land use violations and illegal encroachments, laws
have been modified in the guise of ‘regularisation’ to facilitate the abusers
and to paper over their crimes.
If we talk
about public spaces such as parks and playgrounds, then the most potent threats
they have faced for many years have been either encroachments or ‘change of
land use’ obtained through using political or other forms of influence. This
challenge poses an existential threat to such places of public access. In this
regard, a Judicial Commission formed in the year 2016, in response to a
petition filed by a citizen, looked into services such as water, sanitation and
solid waste. On November 29, 2017, the Supreme Court, responding to another
citizens’ petition, ordered the Karachi Development Authority (KDA) to remove
encroachments from around 35,000 amenity plots in the city within a period of
two months. The Court also observed that in many of the encroached amenity
plots, proper buildings have been constructed, including universities and
marriage halls. This brings into focus an almost complete government failure of
regulating land use that in most cases results from complicity of relevant
government officials with real estate dealers, builders, politicians, and
bureaucrats. Land use manipulation is a high stake operation in Karachi, as a
significant percentage of available finance gets invested in land, to a great
extent in speculative buying.
The scale of this problem is huge
and a study, ‘Parks and Amenity Spaces of Karachi,’ conducted in the year 2011
by a local NGO, Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment, throws some light on
this. The study team physically surveyed all the ST Amenity plots in Karachi
and documented their present land use status, comparing it with the original
land use plans. It was found that of a total of 7911 ST Amenity plots, 1955
were partially or fully encroached upon. This means 24 per cent of the ST
Amenity plots have already been encroached on. Types of encroachments included
mosques, apartments, housing and squatter settlements.
All this has
happened while the law relating to ST Amenity plots specifically states that,
‘Regulation 18-4.1, No Amenity Plot reserved for the specific purpose shall be
converted or utilised for any other purpose’ – ‘The Karachi Building & Town
Planning Regulations, 2002.’ Urban green areas have declined as a proportion to
the urban footprint, from 4.6 per cent (27 km2) to 3.7 per cent (30 km2).
Karachi is a
highly fragmented city with the fragmentation cutting across the institutional,
political, religious and socio-economic fabric of the city. When we deconstruct
processes of transaction of land and services, we find that with the reducing
writ of the state, they have been transferred significantly to the informal
sector that is not regulated.
There is a
parallel economy related with transaction land, access to civic services and
more in the city, running into billions of rupees that is not documented. So
any practice related to land and services provides a mined landscape for our
decision makers. Navigating this landscape to formalise processes, bring back
the rule of law and develop a vision and integrated planning approach would
require a strong show of political will and forging of political consensus
among the key powerbrokers within the city.
In the absence
of this larger vision, we would continue to see more violation of land uses and
encroachment of spaces meant for the public interest.
Publish in News Line Magazine 16 September 2019