Master plan sought for Hyderabad

Planning seems amiss in the expansion of the second largest urban centre of Sindh - Hyderabad. However, Mayor Kashif Shoro has asked the Sindh Master Plant Authority to come with a 50-year master plan for the city.

Every other week a housing scheme or a commercial building’s project is launched in Hyderabad to meet the burgeoning demand for the residential units in the city. However, this expansion, accompanied by the population explosion, has been transpiring in a haphazard way with agricultural lands being converted into residential areas and the residential plots seeing their status changed to commercial. The water supply, sewerage and road services remain in shambles.

In 2017, the population census counted 2.2 million people in Hyderabad. However, in a small span of just six years, the digital census 2023 has put that figure at around 3.5 million people, according to the official sources.

The city is spread over 993 square kilometres. In order to regulate this spiralling multiplication of the dwellings and the residing population the Hyderabad Development Authority (HDA) has been unsuccessfully trying to prepare the city’s master plan for many years.

However, the authority’s apparent failure in this regard has prompted the Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s Mayor Kashif Ali Shoro to step in.

Soon after assuming the charge last month, he announced that he would give a 50-year master plan to Hyderabad. On July 11, the HMC’s municipal commissioner Anees Ahmed Dasti wrote a letter to the Sindh Master Plan Authority to come up with the plan for Hyderabad.

“City has strategic importance in terms of location and history ... serving as a hub for the rest of the [administrative] divisions [in Sindh] including Karachi,” he wrote. Dasti pointed out that due to the influx of migrants from all parts of the country, especially from other districts of Sindh, Hyderabad is expanding both vertically and horizontally at a fast pace. He requested the authority to put together the plan on an urgent basis. He said the plan should define a long-term vision based on the factors like “sustainable development, economic growth, social equity and quality of life”. The plan should address the areas of land use, housing, infrastructure, environment, public spaces and transportation, he added.

The municipal commissioner stated that the HMC wanted to see a balance in the land use for residential, commercial, industrial, institutional, recreational and green spaces. The need for spaces for cycling and pathways for pedestrians was also underlined. Dasti also underscored the importance for development of such neighbourhoods where the sense of community living prevailed and for rejuvenating the old neighbourhoods for the same purpose.

The environmental sustainability and the mitigation of the climate change effects should also be incorporated in the plan, he wrote. The MC offered coordination to the authority in the requested exercise.

HDA’s master plan

The HDA is also in the middle of finalising a master plan for Hyderabad. Its plan consists of seven zones among which three have been notified while the construction activities continue in the remaining four zones without approval of the zonal plans.

Director Planning and Development Control of HDA, Asghar Memon, told The Express Tribune, that their jurisdiction consists of less than half of the total Dehs in Hyderabad. According to him, they were told in a recent meeting, which was chaired by the mayor, that the new master plan will encompass the entire Hyderabad district. “The areas covered in our master plan may also be covered in the HMC sought plan,” he believed.

Memon told that the HDA is working mainly with the private builders. But, he added, the HMC’s plan will also cover the state land and its use besides elaborating the future planning for amenities, residential, commercial, industrial and other purposes.

According to him, the HDA has been updating the road networks since 1980 yet their concept and working plans, under which new housing schemes and commercial buildings are being approved, are still not government notified. The MC Dasti did not respond to calls and messages to give his version.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2023.