‘Cities being made unfriendly for poor’

By Shahid Husain

Karachi

As a result of enormous amount of illegal money that was being funneled in real estate, “poor-friendly cities” were been transformed into “poor-unfriendly cities,” noted architect and town planner Arif Hasan said.

Delivering a lecture on “The world class city concept and its repercussions on urban planning for cities in the South,” at Dawood College of Engineering and Technology Saturday evening, he said underground economy has taken refuge in real estate and was impacting urban development in a big way.

“In 1991, per square meter cost of land in ‘katchi abadi’ was 1.7 times the daily wage. Today it was 40 times the daily wage. Rent per month in 1991 was 3.5 times of daily wage; today it is 10 times the daily wage. The construction cost per square meter in 1991 was 6.6 times the daily wage; today it is 20 times the daily wage,” he said.

He said that the emergence of the welfare state model was born out of an uneasy reconciliation between capitalism and its national and international opponents. The demise of welfare state was a result of market economy, structural adjustments and the role of decentralisation and devolution, he explained.

He said that “total control” of three coercive agencies - the United Nations, World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank - was determining world politics and development processes.

He said that market economy development concepts have been promoted through new processes and vocabulary. Today it was not the business of the state to do business but privatisation and public-private partnership was the norm and has resulted in massive privatisation that has not been successful, he added.

As a result of these concepts, he said, what developed were build-operate-transfer and the build-operate-own concepts of investment. The whole focus was on macro economics and corporate farming, he added.

Arif Hasan said that India has seen phenomenal growth but it was as poor as it was 10 years ago. In India by 2015, he said, 400 million people would be willingly or unwillingly forced to move from rural to urban areas and the same was the pattern in Pakistan.

He said that the old contraband smuggling organisations became inoperative due to liberalism and they have turned to real estate business leading to speculation. ”These underground organisations are very powerful and government has responded by making major changes in zoning bye-laws,” he added.

He said that these gangs previously operated separately and have brought conflicts in the market and have turned to real estate and massive speculation. The state has responded to these market pressures and made land available for development through land-use conversion, new development schemes and the bulldozing low income settlements, he said. Activists opposing these changes were often killed, he cautioned.

Arif Hasan further said that the processes involved were capital intensive, leading to borrowing from IFCs and in most cases the bulk of the funds go to the North as technical assistance and in overheads. In case of Pakistan as much as 38 per cent funding went back to these coercive institutions, he pointed out.

He said that the shapes our cities were taking were the result of a powerful nexus of developers and investors and many of them were of dubious origins.

He said that the world class city as envisioned by City Nazim Mustafa Kamal and many other city leaders across the world was perceived as having an iconic structure by which a city should be recognised such as an attempt to build the highest fountain in the world in Karachi. It should be branded, be an international event city, should have high-rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements and neighbourhoods and it should cater to tourism, often at the expense of local commerce, he explained.

He said that this vision leads to several repercussions: poverty was pushed out of the city to the periphery through massive bulldozing with disastrous results; violence and the creation of a new under-class. He pointed out that as many as 500,000 people in Delhi have been evicted ahead of Olympics.

Arif Hasan said that politicians and government planners justify high-rise re-development but the real question was: Do we need friendly neighbourhoods or high-rises? He said that people were killed whenever there was resistance against these developments and properties were burnt.

He said that the world class image of the city has no place in it for informal businesses and hawkers. Referring to the so-called beach development in Karachi, he pointed out that by banning cheap food you also ban poor people to enjoy the beach.

He said that there were three players in development, namely politicians, planners and the people. As a result of devolution, however, relationship of utility and planning agencies has become subservient to politicians and it has led to ad-hocism and favourtism, while the elected city representatives have become ”mini gods”, he said.

”In Karachi I see projects replacing planning for a foreseeable future,” he remarked. ”It’s not laws that make societies, its values that make societies,” he hastened to add.
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