An Alternate Paradigm For Urban Planning

A.G. Krishna Menon

UNDERSTANDING KARACHI: PLANNING AND REFORM FOR THE FUTURE

By Arif Hasan with assistance from Muhammed Younus and 5. Akbar Zaidi

The City Press, Karachi, 1999, pp. 173, Pak Rs. 295.00

A mong the spatial design disciplines, urban planning is perhaps the least understood, that is, if at all one considers urban planning a design discipline. Even though its origins place it as an offshoot of architecture, and most urban planners, at least in India, study architecture as a pre-qualifying undergraduate degree, the fact is that urban planners distance themselves from the subjectivity associated with the parent discipline. Only a few urban planners like Kevin Lynch (The Image of the City) and Christopher Alexander (7he New Theory of Urban Design) attempt to explore the experiential nature of urban planning, as if people mattered but their work is branded as urban design, in order to distinguish it from the pragmatic, nuts and bolts (streets and sewers?) concerns around which urban planners locate their professional identity.

This identity has seldom been examined critically. I have argued (in the Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai, Vol. XXXII No. 46. November 15, 1997, pp. 2932-2936) that urban planners in India are doubly constrained: first, by their status as low-level functionaries invariably in government service and, second, by their surprisingly limited understanding of their clients-the city and its inhabitants. They are reared on studies of urbanization and urbanism conducted in the West, which they adopt as universal models and assiduously apply to the Indian context. This process is further reinforced by three factors: the depth of the colonial experience (for example the Town and Country Planning Acts are modelled on antiquated British legislations): the influence of foreign city-planners like Edwin Luryens (“the garden city”. New Delhi) and Le Corbusier (“the cite universale”, Chandigarh) who forged iconic images of the city in India, and finally, the impera tives of globalization. The near natural propensity (and here the urban planner is not alone) to valorize the European or American city as an attainable, desirable prototype means that urban planners in India live and function vicariously, and have seldom attempted to understand the characteristics of indigenous urbanism evolving before their eyes, let alone plan for it. In effect, what Indian urban planners have studiously attempted so far is to put a square peg in a round hole!

As if this situation were not bad enough, the tragedy is compounded by the unrealistic expectation of their ‘clients’: the upper and middle-class society-at-large. It is the expectations of this powerful and articu-late elite that urban planners professionally address. Even the basic needs of the invisible’ and inarticulate majority are marginalized in their Master Plans because satisfying them defies the imagination of the urban planner. When an activist-expert like the present Minister for Urban Development, Jagmohan, wages war against slums and the criminal nexus between the developer mafia and the regulatory authori-ties, what few people realize is that he actually misses the woods for the trees: he fails to address the more fundamental issues confronting the profession which create the very problems he is attempting to solve. It has not dawned on either the Minister, or the profession, that both problems the criminal nexus at the high end of the market and the

The near natural propensity (and here the urban planner is not alone) to valorize the European or American city as an attainable, desirable prototype means that urban planners in India live and function vicariously, and have seldom attempted to understand the characteristics of indigenous urbanism evolving before their eyes, let alone plan for it.

Understanding Karachi Planning and Reform for the Future

Arif Hasan

proliferation of slums at the low end are the conse-quences of adopting inappro priate urban planning strategies. Unfortunately, this conceptual blindness is endorsed by the urban elite. and translates into the broad support the Minister receives when he launches a demoli-tion juggernaut to level both the hapless slum dweller and the land-builder mafia.

It is this elite (and this Minister) who should read Arif Hasan’s book, Understanding Karachi, to recognize the limitations of their approach to urban reform. Hasan squarely confronts the conundrum facing urban planning in Pakistan (which is not different from that in India), and persuasively articulates the relevance of “appropriate” urban planning strategies to tackle the problems of Third World cities,

Arif Hasan is an architect, teacher and professional activist who compellingly straddles the diverging streams of architecture and urban planning. For the last twenty years he has been associated with the internationally acclaimed Orangi Pilot Project. Orangi is Karachi’s largest slum accommodating about 1.2 million people and, like Dharavi in Mumbai, symbolizes the “intractable problem associated with urbanization in the Third World. Challenging this negative view, a multidisciplinary group of concerned social scientists, architects and urban planners in Karachi have been engaged in “action research” and “extension education” to come up with viable solutions to the problems of Orangi. In the process of working in the “urban underbelly of Karachi”, Arif Hasan has acquired a penetrating insight into the urban problems of the city. His views are significantly at variance with “official” planning policy which, like its Indian counterpart, advances (western) solutions without appreciating local specificity. Planning and Reform for the Future rights this conceptual reversal by beginning with a study of the local context and then proposing strategies that are custom-ized to its needs. Indian urban planners would do well to emulate this approach.

In ten brief chapters covering different functional aspects of the city, Understanding Kerachi, presents a synoptic view of its urban planning issues. In addition, several explanatory boxes, which focus on signifi cant events, actors, initiatives and views, flesh out the bare narrative of the text. Hasan writes lucidly, targeting both a professional and lay readership, and explains how the exclusive exercise of police powers by the state to institute urban development reform has, in fact, exacer-bated the problems. The dictatorial policies of the Ayub (1959-68) and Bhutto (1972-77) eras, Zia-ul-Huq’s military dictatorship that followed (1977-87), and the rise of the Mojahit Qaumi Movement (1987-97) which was equally dictatorial in its prescriptions, have each contributed to the weakening of local government and development institutions, and consolidated the politics of ethnicity, corruption and nepotism. The drugs and guns syndrome is now part and parcel of the struggle for urban turf, its protagonists protected by venal law enforcement agencies. The rise of advocacy NGOs, pressure groups and community activists is a testament to these dire circumstances. Hasan points out that their activities have led to a “dialogue between the ineffective state organization and the people. It has also given the opportunity to

The Book Review October 2000/53

in order to be sustainable, a conservation strategy must enlist the involvement of the people who will be affected by its implementation.

concerned civil servants and technocrats to support the NGOs and pressure groups”.

Hasan’s is a better guide to urban develop-ment reform than the knee-jerk reliance on the jack-boot and bulldozer favoured by dictators and activist Ministers. Two ideas that Hasan discusses are of particular rel-evance to the Indian context. The first is his perspective on heritage and the dynamism of culture; and the second, the role of the Department of Architecture and Planning at Dawood College in seeking solutions to Karachi’s urban problems.

Hasan’s experience with the Orangi Pilot Project reconfirms a dictum of progressive. socially-responsible urban heritage conserva-tion: in order to be sustainable, a conservation strategy must enlist the involvement of the people who will be affected by its implementa tion. “(T)he absence of transparency accountability and participation of interest groups in the planning and construction of the new Sabzi Mandi” scuttled the attempt to relocate markets away from Karachi’s historic core area. Conservation-related projects, Hasan continues, “can only be solved as part of a larger city planning exercise that deals effectively with the traffic and transport problems of the city in general and (the historic core) in particular”. These are timely lessons for the Delhi Development Authority which is in the process of formulating the next Master Plan for Delhi, and is considering a more focussed involvement with heritage-related issues of this historic city.

The involvement of Dawood College in mediating the future of Karachi is equally instructive. In 1979. Dawood College “re-viewed its curriculum and came to the conclusion that ‘architecture in the context of Pakistan must be seen primarily as a socially responsive environmental design discipline’ and (the college) should produce socially responsive architects”. To promote this philosophy, the college revised its curriculum and maintained close relations with other reform-minded institutions and projects like the Orangi Pilot Project. It is not surprising. therefore, that almost all the architects working in the development field or involved in advocacy work in Pakistan, are either graduates of or teachers in this programme.

There are two reasons for my highlighting the academic advocacy of Dawood College: one personal, the other institutional. The per-sonal is to draw attention to the treatment meted out to the TVB School of Habitat Stu-dies, New Delhi, which espoused much the same concerns about Delhi as did Dawood College for Karachi. TVB was established a decade ago by concerned professionals in the field to address the crisis in the urban envi-

54

ronment. By several accounts, the School and its programme achieved a modicum of success. But the Council of Architecture has, in its bureaucratic wisdom, decided to close down the School. So, I cannot help but wonder why, unlike us, Dawood College succeeded. Perhaps, in spite of our common colonial legacy, Indians are still driven by thoughtful innovation. stultifying rules and regulations rather than

The institutional point relates to the curri culum imposed on architectural colleges. Re-cently, the latest “cutting-edge” university in India, the Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, issued its syllabus for architectural education, which is merely more of the old in the guise of the new: the syllabus. and pedagogy have not changed in fifty years! How will acad academic advocacy succeed in India if we cannot recognize our dogmatic trappings for what they are and move to rid ourselves of them? Will the situation have to deteriorate to the level of Karachi’s before our urban planners, architects, educational institutions, and government agencies wake up to the need for substantive reform?

And what of the demanding urban elite? As Hasan concludes, reform can be “imple-mented if Karachi’s professionals and intelli-gentsia can join hands with the citizen’s groups and NGOs active in this field, instead of constantly complaining and moaning about. living conditions in the city”. There is need for a much greater awareness of urban planning among both lay people and profes-sionals. While lay people must appreciate that the future of the city is too important to be left entirely in the hands of urban planners, urban planners themselves must recognize and respond to the aspirations of the social majority rather than an elite sub-section. The socio-economic imperatives of India’s dynami-cally evolving society are at complete odds with the vision of a socially stable, culturally homogenous and economically viable society that guides the Master Plan of urban planners. NGOs working in the field and educational institutions must forge partnerships to bring about much-needed reform, both in the classroom and on the ground. Western

theories of urbanization cannot substitute for a “situated knowledge” of Indian urbanism. The leitmotif of Understanding Karachi is the need for “an alternative planning paradigm”. This is as true for India as it is for Pakistan. and yet another reason for the two countries to engage in a constructive dialogue abour their shared predicament.

Cf. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cybongs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, London: Free Association, 1991.

A.G. Krishna Menon is an Architect-Urban planiner with a practice in Delhi since 1972 which has included several architectural heritage conservative projects. He was the Director of the TBV School of Habitat Studies, New Delhi

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