PHOTO: PPI
Why Karachi needs pro-resettlement, not anti-encroachment housing policies
Millions lack access to crucial services in Karachi, and Covid-19 has exposed how pervasive the city’s problems are
The Karachi Municipal Corporation is currently conducting an
aimed at reclaiming illegally occupied land. The operation is likely (and predictably) going to cause many of the city’s urban poor to become homeless overnight.
It goes without saying that evictions commonly – if not exclusively – target the urban poor. There has always been a simplistic assumption baked into Karachi’s master plans that if low-income settlements are somehow eradicated (or hidden), the city will miraculously prosper. What ends up happening time and again is that ambitious development projects do little more than repackage changes in the city’s s built form as progress, and that too at the expense of depriving many a secure space in Karachi.