A tourist’s guide to Karachi

Group of students from IVS went around Saddar to identify tourist sites and the easiest way to get there.

KARACHI:

When planning a holiday, most tourists don’t think about Karachi twice. The weather, load-shedding and city’s violent reputation put most people off - a gang war in Lyari isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea.

There are some, however, who dare to look beyond Foreign Policy’s 2011 article where it named Karachi as one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Unfortunately, for them, they end up going to the Quaid’s mazaar or Burnes Road again and again.

Keeping this in mind, a group of architecture students and their teacher, Farhan Anwar, worked together and came up with something rather brilliant.

Anwar, who is also an urban planner, assigned his class of 15 students the task of figuring out a way to make the city accessible for tourists. They worked within a 600 metre radius around the Pearl Continental Hotel where they had to identify tourist sites, distances, how to get there and problems tourists were likely to face along the way.



Getting around

The students had an entire semester to research - read, write and explore. They decided that the best way to understand the area they were going to work in was on foot.

Their aim was to identify historic sites and interesting places where a tourist would want to go.

They narrowed it down to eight places - the Polo Ground, Frere Hall, Aman House, the National Academy of Performing Arts, the Arts Council, Free Mason Lodge, Metropole Hotel and Flagstaff House.

They realised that a few things they needed to sort out as soon as possible. One of them was maps. “How does a tourist know where to go?” they asked. “Most hotels do not have maps of tourist spots or even lists of things happening in the city.”

According to one of the students, if a businessman was in Karachi for a couple of days - where did he go? “He probably only has time to roam around the area he is staying in,” said the students. “The easiest way for him to explore the city is on foot or riding a bicycle. Metropole Hotel, Frere Hall, Zainab Market and Flagstaff House are all can all be reached in a little over 20 minutes.” The real problem, they added, was the fact that all these places existed but there was little documentation.

With maps out of the way, the students geared up to face a real roadblock in their research - barricades. “There are several roadblocks and barricades in the area, especially around Chief Minister House,” said the students. “These barricades make it difficult for pedestrians to walk on the sidewalk and force them to walk on the road.”



Anwar’s students decided that they needed to work on making the city’s streets pedestrian-friendly as well. “Most of the sidewalks in this area are four feet wide,” said Ayesha Channa, a student. “According to smart city planning and design, they should ideally be six to 10 feet and should have plenty of space for planters and shading.” She added that there should be shaded seating on footpaths for the people waiting for buses or for passersby, who can use it as a place to sit.

Getting to know Karachi

Speaking about Frere Hall, the students said that it was sad that people had no recurring reason to keep going there - despite the structure’s beauty and historical significance for the city. “There is a book bazaar on Sunday and a library but there is a need for more,” they said. “There is so much space there. They can use the gardens and turn it into a walking or cycling track. Aman House was voted as one of their favourites. The house is tucked away in a street behind Quaid-e-Azam’s 1943 residence, and is owned by the Aman Foundation. It is usually used for private events. The space, according to the students, is perfect for a heritage site. “They need to organise the parking and increase public activity to utilise it properly,” said a student. “They could use some of the rooms in the house as a library or renovate the building and turn it into a museum.”

Project: Tourist district

Ayesha Channa, Rushad Dastoor, Zainub Khan, Mehreen Kazim, Shahbano Popalzai, Faheem Abrar, Insia Abbas Lakda, Takreem Nehal, Samar Zehra, Muhammad Wasim Shekhani, Jahangir Ahmed Chohan, Farrukh Ahmed Salman, Rija Yousaf, Syed Kazim Manzoor Naqvi and Dawood Akbar went around Karachi’s Saddar area to identify places tourists would like to visit. While conducting their research, they timed how long it took them to walk from one place to another. Using the PC Hotel as their centre point, they said that it took them 11 minutes and 30 seconds to walk to Flagstaff House and around 29 minutes to talk from PC to the Free Mason Lodge near Karachi Press Club.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 14^th, 2014.