Encroached public spaces

Every few months, Karachi goes through a cycle of development for its multiple infrastructural problems. One of them is the anti-encroachment drive that its people are now deeply familiar with: bulldozers roll in, stalls are removed and officials announce that the roads are finally clear. The most recent instalments of this cycle happened in North Nazimabad and along Mauripur Road. But by now, everyone knows what will happen next. Eventually, security will become lax, some palms will be greased and the stalls will reappear soon enough.

The problem is bigger than a few vendors on a footpath. In areas like Shara-e-Faisal, Saddar, Tariq Road and Liaquatabad, to name a few, the roads have vanished behind hordes of stalls and carts and have been swallowed by parking mafias. These significant public spaces have turned into private turfs, resulting in endless congestion that disrupts the traffic flow of the entire city.

The frustrating part is that the problem is easily solvable. Karachi's roads aren't too small for its traffic, they're just never actually empty. If officials take honest charge and clear these roads - for the longer run - commuters will save hours upon hours that they spend stuck in a flood of cars instead. Moreso, the conservation of fuel will be significant and can lead to real savings on a fuel import bill that Pakistan is not in a position to gleefully afford.

The clearing of these roads is almost always strategic and rooted in extortion. The anti-encroachment drive is headlined on news channels with overzealous crackdowns and when the noise has died down, the spots are magically available again for a 'price'. It is almost as if it's a profit-generating business. Truth is, tearing things down is the easy part. These drives can only become believable once the roads are kept clear afterwards as well - with proper monitoring and transparent records.