AN OVERVIEW OF TOWN PLANNING IN PAKISTAN By Prof. Dr. Ghulam Abbas Anjum

1. AN OVERVIEW OF TOWN PLANNING IN PAKISTANBy Prof. Dr. Ghulam Abbas Anjum

2. Schematic History of Urban Planning in Pakistan • Notions of town planning traditions before colonialist • British began to change existing towns by building cantonment for military and area of civil lines for administration • Activity not necessarily integrated under the heading of town planning but It was an exercise in town planning nevertheless • Town planning essentially local, physical and restrictive, rooted in engineering and architectural traditions • Town planning was reactive and practiced sporadically

4. Need for Comprehensive Planning • In response to mounting problems caused by rapid growth and need to plan a new capital • Aim was comprehensive planning at the city or city/ region scale • Detail and specificity was to a local scale • The vehicle used was a Master Plan • Master Plan tailored in shape of Outline Development Plan for smaller towns • This form of planning survived longer in Pakistan than in the UK

8. Strengths and Weaknesses of Master Plan • To date, Master Plan is projected as the key official document for planned development of a town/ city • Its comprehensiveness is its main claim • Master planning methodology leads grandiose plans that are never implemented • Master Plan emphasizes on physical planning and touches upon social and economic dimensions of proposals only peripherally • Little attention is paid to importance of setting development priorities in the light of fiscal and administrative constraints of governments • The regional context is often forgotten

9. Strengths and Weaknesses of Master Plan (Cont’d) • It is largely a bundle of half-baked ideas incorporated into a proposed land use plan • The process of preparing plans is time consuming and plans if meticulously prepared, are rigid and often out dated by the time they are enforced • In a rapidly urbanizing circumstances, the projections on which long term plans are based often go haywire. • Conventional Master Plans are prepared with a limited participation of stakeholders • Even if well prepared with all available inputs aim at addressing development needs to be backed by a well-oiled administrative machinery, which simply does not exist in Pakistani cities • Most of what is being implemented has not been given in Master Plans

10. Caution! • Out of date, detailed plans encourage haphazard development and mean that infrastructure is underprovided and follows development. • Such “planning” favors the speculators and squeezes the poor.

11. Urban planning is accepted everywhere as a necessary function • A hallmark of human society • There is no substitute to planning But If it not anchored to local conditions, it can easily be substituted by anarchy. Thus the success of planning in the future may depend on the success with which we integrate art, design, spatial planning, public policy, market forces, and cultural management.

12. What can be done? • There can be no sustainable development without sustainable urbanization • There can be no sustainable urbanization without a new form planning • That form of planning has to be pro-poor.

13. Why Planning could not Bring Better Living Conditions? (Assumptions) • Planners’ advice may be good or inappropriate • Planners’ role may be recognized or ignored • Planners may not have adequate training • Politicians may have a distorted sense of the public interests • Plans may be unrealistic, given their resource requirements • Plans may not reflect priorities of community or business interests • Powerful economic interests may have influenced the implementation of plans • Implementation authority may be fragmented among jurisdictions

14. Problems • Slums are multiplying • Development keeps sprawling • Transport efficiency is declining • Energy costs are rising • Housing supply and demand gap is widening • Low income housing issue is becoming severe • Environmental degradation