Urban and regional planning: ‘City’s historic outlook is diminishing every day

‘The city is made up of tangible monuments and intangible memories’.

KARACHI:

The demolition of buildings and unsympathetic development in Karachi has caused a rapid loss of the cultural and historic urban landscape and has destroyed the collective character of the city, said Ayesha Agha Shah of the NED University Architecture and Planning Department.

She said that the historical outlook of Karachi is diminishing day by day. The characteristics of a historic layout do not only include heritage buildings alone. It extends beyond buildings and includes streets, boundaries, trees, paths and views, she added.

A particular use of buildings, open spaces between and around buildings such as parks, greens, thoroughfares, chowks also remind us of historic views and these collective characters of tangible monuments and intangible memories need to be protected, she believed.

At a seminar on urban and regional planning, ‘Exploring Historic Urban Landscapes: Retrospection-Transformation-Revival’, at the NED University of Engineering and Technology on Saturday, Prof Emeritus Brian Goody admitted that the integration of the cultural and heritage sites with current knowledge is a big challenge for those who choose to conserve such places.

According to Goody, the historic context of our decisions is having a hard time. It is seen as a desirable luxury for those who can afford it - a significant factor in Western planning - but preserving heritage sites when faced with community protests for basic facilities is confusing, he said.

As new generations respond to an electronic and globalised world, daily life and public policy seem to connect to events. Often the only environmental response is to insure facilities, to enhance for the benefit of an essential tourist market. Sustainability hovers in the background as a global desire, difficult to achieve at the local level, he added.

For Alfredo Conti of the Buenos Aires University, historic urban landscape means an approach that considers the town as a complex system made up of tangible and intangible components that include historic areas and their natural or built surroundings.

The NED University Architecture and Planning Department’s Dr Anila Naeem said that most historic and urban centres in Pakistan today are endangered by overbearingly chaotic and unplanned developments - their stories of grandeur being constrained to chronicles and travelogues.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 27^th, 2011.