Urban enigma: Becoming of today’s Karachi

When Saba Imtiaz wrote Karachi, You’re Killing me! she portrayed Karachi’s metropolitan life full of paradoxes. While she pictured it through the vantage point of the reporter, Ayesha; the same was done by Arif Hassan through his paper on trends of urbanization in Karachi. Hassan attempted to map out juggling of urban planning in Karachi under scores of influences ranging from political, social, and national and international. However, my commentary, comments on corresponding inequality with lack of inclusive planning concluding in planning failures, and simultaneous successes of informal projects of land mafia—that is Katchi Abaadis or settlements. The Odds with Karachi Karachi has been plagued with issues of sorts, and yet serves as riveting economic hub; housing major multinational corporations, economic institutions as well as I.I. Chundrigar Road is mailing address to all public and private banks headquarters. Karachi has suffered political rifts, racial profiling, unplanned and unwarranted migrations and classic cases of planning failures in settling citizens peacefully.