This study looks at the development of Karachi’s master plan through a comparative lens with the intention of establishing a precedent for developing a city by examining how Karachi’s peer cities have evolved. It has been done by curating a list of seventeen of the world’s mega cities and dividing them into categories that reflect the fundamental designs of their original master plans: cartesian, radial or organic, as well as hybrids. This not only helps to identify what cities resemble Karachi’s urban evolution in the past, but also to act as precedence on which to base future development plans. This approach to re-designing a master plan has two primary advantages. Firstly, it is less generic as its main purpose is to identify and examine what cities have had the same problems as Karachi not only to identify what strategies help at mitigating them and can therefore be tailored to fit Karachi’s urban fabric, but also to understand the negative unintended consequences of these strategies and how to avoid them.

Secondly, the approach also gives planning a greater sense of perspective and therefore encourages the creation of a long-term vision of what Karachi could realistically look like by 2030. This gives rise to the creation of more holistic ideas that could be implemented over time at a large scale to strive for a more utopian city. Karachi has been identified as a hybrid of an originally cartesian design that evolved into a more organic one.

After having examined the master plans of the sixteen other mega cities as well as other relevant factors such as GDP per Capita, HDI, population and population density, Gini coefficient etc. New Delhi, Dhaka and Rio de Janeiro have been identified as those cities that are most comparable to Karachi when looking at how their contemporary urban problems are being tackled (such as slum management in the Favelas of Rio being important to consider when devising strategies for mitigating Karachi’s problems with urban sprawl and low-cost housing).

Furthermore, Shanghai, Beijing and Cairo have also been identified as once being comparable to Karachi with regard to layout but are now far more developed and can therefore potentially be used as a proxy for projecting Karachi’s development progression.

With regard to layout, Shanghai, New Delhi, Dhaka and Cairo were all identified as being most comparable to Karachi as they all consist of a hybrid between a fundamentally cartesian plan and organic growth. Additionally, Rio de Janeiro, which has a primarily organic layout, and Beijing, which is primarily cartesian, were also chosen as comparable to Karachi. Furthermore, given that Karachi has GDP per capita of US$ 6000, a HDI of 0.560, and a population density of 24,000 people per square kilometre, New Delhi was chosen as most comparable to Karachi with regard to its development indicators as it has a GDP per capita of US$ 5,600, a HDI of 0.730 and a population density of 11,300 people per square kilometre.

Dhaka was also chosen as a peer city of Karachi; although it has significantly higher GDP per capita of over US$ 12,000, it has a more moderate HDI of 0.695 than that of New Delhi, and its population density of 23,234 people per square kilometre is very similar to Karachi, indicating that the two megacities will have similar issues to mitigate with regard to population size being taken into account when developing a master plan. Finally, Rio de Janeiro was also chosen to be one of Karachi’s closest peer cities. This is because of its primary contemporary issues surrounding urbanisation due to its favelas resembling Karachi’s need to incorporate the development of its peripheral squatter settlements into its master plan in addition to being comparable with regard to development indicators. India and Bangladesh also have Gini coefficients of 35.7 and 32.4 respectively, which is very similar to that of Pakistan which is 33.5. Therefore, when comparing master plans of their main cities, similar issues surrounding inequality must be dealt with, which can be compared and contrasted to reach a more informed decision of Karachi’s master plan.

This document argues that Karachi’s master plan must use these peer cities as proxies to help gain an understanding of how the issues being faced in Karachi are and have been mitigated elsewhere. Crucially however, this must also identify how and why other mega cities have failed to solve the identified problems and ultimately help to construct a holistic, sustainable, long-term plan for Karachi to aim to progress towards.

Furthermore, Karachi’s master plan must fundamentally incorporate a plan that facilitates social cohesion between the currently drastically divided economic classes, as well as providing the means for those in the lowest socio-economic strata of society to progress up the socio-economic hierarchy, without relying on relief-aid to temporarily lift them out of poverty. This includes the provision of basic amenities and infrastructural developments such as transport infrastructure including secure, clean bus routes and trainlines that link the city centre to the slums on the periphery as this would not only allow slum dwellers to access the higher paying jobs in the city centre to alleviate poverty, but also facilitate social cohesion as higher income people are more likely to use public transport once its conditions improve, as it is currently not a viable alternative to individual automotive travel. This would also decrease congestion in the city, which is not only beneficial for efficiency in traversing the urban environment, but also for climate change.

This could potentially be through the development of modular communities, either to redevelop informal settlements on the city’s periphery, or to develop unused land in the city centre. These, through the use of mixed land use zoning policies, could potentially be used to mitigate a variety of socio-economic issues surrounding social cohesion, access to basic amenities, congestion and transport, as well as providing an environment that gives people the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty, which would have a plethora of indirect consequences such as the overall HDI and GDP per capita increasing, as well as crimes rates decreasing, as a higher proportion of the population become educated.

It could be looked at and through the lens of a western concept called ‘Smart Growth’, aimed at developing suburban communities in the United States, one of which’s 10 principles is the implementation of land use zoning policies that favour mixed land use so that communities are more walkable, and all residents having access to basic amenities. This would however have to be modified to be appropriate for the primary concerns in Karachi in particular, taking into account the preservation of the city’s integrity, and with regard to its heritage and culture such as Mosques being integrated within these communities, which could be looked at through Dhaka’s layout, as it also has a population which is over 90% Muslim. These communities would also have to be laid out in way which suits an elastic framework that facilitates organic growth, both for businesses, and for increased residential areas and amenities as the population inevitably grows.