Bye-bye town planning: With new book, Shehri-CBE tries to get back city’s parks

Shehri-CBE launches new book on ‘lost’ parks and amenity spaces.

KARACHI: Karachi no longer has open spaces. Parks and amenity places have been illegally taken over to build houses and even mosques - that often goes unreported. For years now, basic town planning principles have been violated.

In two bulky volumes packed with official maps and Google’s satellite imagery of Karachi’s different neighbourhoods, Shehri-Citizens for a Better Environment’s latest book points out the illegal construction going on unabated in the port city particularly related with amenity spaces. Compiled and edited by Shehri’s Naila Ahmed, the book titled “Parks and Amenity Spaces of Karachi” was launched Friday afternoon.

“Mosques can only be built on paid property but [now] we see community gardens in North Karachi, PECHS and other places that have been encroached and made into mosques,” said Amber Alibhai, the organisation’s general secretary. “We no longer have open spaces.”

Parks and amenity spaces are meant for public good, said Roland deSouza, an executive member of Shehri. “[But] in the past 30 years, we have seen a tendency to take over these spaces as there are no other free spaces left in the city.” The original master plan of the city was excellent and the planners had put up a city that was liveable but the escalating population and movement of people from other cities has created problems, he said. “We are hoping that the book be used to help protect whatever is left.”

DeSouza also touched upon the laws that forbid the change of land use. “These basic principles have been violated for years,” deSouza said. On I.I. Chundrigar Road, next to the Karachi Stock Exchange, a person wanted to construct a building in the middle of the road, he said.

Huzuri Bagh

Terming it the “Rape of Huzuri Bagh”, deSouza, through a series of satellite images from 2007 till 2010, explained how this park in North Nazimabad was lost to the land mafia.

Formed in the late 1960s, the park was spread over six acre divided in two parts, according to the 1971 map of the KDA. That same year, however, another official map divided the plot into three parts.

He then showed a satellite image taken in 2007 in which the park was clear of construction. However, the image from 2008 showed markings on the ground allegedly done by the developers. The 2009 photo showed houses being constructed all over the amenity plot, which by 2010 was lost to the encroachers. “Can you imagine the Central Park in New York allowing citizens build houses over it?” deSouza wondered.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2012.