Once in discussion with urban advocates and legal aid representatives, the concept of 'farsh se arsh' [from the ground to the sky] was explained through rights to environment, rights of living and human dignity -- humans and non-humans co-sharing environments from the soil to sky.
This concept has become a critical junction in today's urban planning. For most of human history, we have designed in harmony with other species. This is important to keep in mind for architects and developers exploring the spatial, cultural and ecological impacts of the industrialised, built-environment.
However, this is not the case in Karachi. As the urban flooding across the city on August 19, 2025 in the aftermath of torrential downpour demonstrated yet again, Karachi's 'urban planning' has left the city and its inhabitants standing at a perilous juncture. The relentless building of high-rises, destruction of coastal lines, lack of city planning and brazen flouting of building safety laws have led to Karachi literally drowning in infrastructural problems.
So how did Karachi end up in such a mess? The reasons are multi-layered and are the consequence of decades of neglect and misplaced priorities. Over the years, Karachi has seen its master plans being routinely disregarded, zoning laws becoming ineffective, high-rises being built without consideration for safety regulations and rampant commercialisation in urban centres that simply lack the infrastructure to support such relentless 'growth'.
The havoc wreaked by the recent rains in Karachi was a reminder that the megapolis exists today in a fragile ecosystem, due in large part to rampant urban 'development' and aggressive real-estate projects. How did the city arrive at this juncture and can it still be saved?
As a consequence, Karachi has many densely built localities where people have no choice but to live in poorly ventilated, poorly lit, tightly-packed buildings in the middle of urban centres that are already wrestling with issues of traffic congestion and sanitation. Beyond this, the environmental ramifications of such unregulated urban development and the systematic erasure of so many green spaces across the city has only served to increase the likelihood of urban flooding in Karachi.
Land use in Karachi is entirely determined by land value. As a result, the majority has always witnessed slow violence in the form of pollution, environmental degradation, congestion and degradation of the right to life. It is established that the temporalities of development and urban interventions have not catered to the needs of the majority.
Karachi's vertical expansion illustrates the city's isolated high-stakes approach to urban development, where real estate developers are scrambling to exploit the bubble formed over mixed-use land. Enabling legal frameworks and a lack of adherence to master plans have allowed the city to undergo major transformations since the early 2000s, when major road arteries were commercialised by the former mayor of Karachi Naimatullah Khan. The impact of unchecked urban development and commercial pattis [rows of shops] located below high-rise residential buildings is cause for great concern.
But before diving into the specifics of Karachi's urban development issues, it is imperative to understand how the changes in the city's social demography and the rise of the nuclear family model catalysed the haphazard 'development' path Karachi has been on for decades.
UNDERSTANDING THE URBAN FAMILY MODEL
Contrary to what some may think, high- and mid-rise development in Karachi is not a new phenomenon. Since the time of the British, areas such as Saddar featured commercial strips, with owners residing in the upper floors, culminating in mixed-use urban form that has persisted post-Partition. These high-rise buildings often housed tight-knit communities, bound by ethnicity, religion or class, creating cross-functional networks of care and trust. This social architecture softened the blows of Karachi's sprawling heterogeneity.
As Partition gradually reshaped the city's demography, the development of high-rise residences laid a particular emphasis on housing particular ethnic groups, such as Sindhis, Parsis, Memons etc. However, this devolved into a utilitarian model based solely on profit, as the real estate economy grew in the city at an alarming pace.
Over the past few decades, residential buildings have evolved into multi-ethnic hubs retaining the built form: commercial pattis tucked between stacked apartments based more on functionality than rigid zoning. This organic 'development' shaped Karachi's economy, creating a kind of vertical densification.
According to Amber Ali Bhai, head of the non-profit Shehri - Citizens for a Better Environment, "It's basically a mental ghetto of the people, and that's how they feel comfortable... they feel it's about safety in numbers."
The Muttahida Qaumi Movement's (MQM) rise in the late 1970s radically altered Karachi's social fabric, where safety became a heightened concern. The concept of a high-rise -- due to more people together, one entrance and a watchman to guard it -- grew popular among the middle class. Political violence forced the people of Karachi to retreat behind closed doors and gates.
The shift towards high-rise residential buildings catalysed the transition of joint-family systems into nuclear families, with women gaining more autonomy within the home. Ethnically skewed master plans, once a tool of segregation, lost their importance in the face of undocumented wealth and increased private mobility. Accessibility became a given, as people moved beyond their designated enclaves, perpetuating fractured urban identity.
So, if the city's master plans have become less and less important over the years, what rubric is being followed when copious amounts of real-estate projects are being green-lit across the city?
THE CRUMBLING IMPORTANCE OF MASTER PLANS AND CONVENTIONAL PLANNING
Over the years, Karachi's master plans have been reduced to suggestions rather than law. The city's urban and infrastructural development has grown speculative and disconnected from the ecological realities of the region. As the world moves towards efficient city planning, Karachi's government remains rooted in conventional methods.
These plans are created by the same regulatory bodies tasked with enforcement, such as the Karachi Development Authority (KDA), creating a conflict of interest. The city finds itself grappling with a top-down approach, where high-rises appear in low-density zones and civic infrastructure is either reactive or entirely missing. Karachi's land-use policy continues to fragment its urban fabric, inviting irreversible damage through poorly conceived flyovers, commercial encroachments and the destruction of green buffers.
Political misalignment has cost Karachi far more than the Sindh Government is willing to admit. Naimatullah Khan's controversial commercialisation of major road networks in the early 2000s set a precedent for bypassing city-level planning in favour of short term revenue. This divorce between the policymakers and key stakeholders continued with disjointed policies, such as the Sindh High Density Act 2010 that was introduced by the prime minister at the time without due consultation with urban planners.
This results in a governance model where decisions about a city's future are made without architects, urban planners and the public. Barring key stakeholders from decision-making ensures that development serves capital, not communities. Infrastructure falters, as essential services such as water, sewerage and electricity buckle. This is all the more evident in the poorly planned commercial centres that litter the city.
COMMERCIAL-ORIENTED GROWTH CENTRES
Markets, over the course of history, have been at the gravitational core of cities, surrounded by homes, institutions and power. Karachi mirrors this historical blueprint with a contemporary evolution -- its markets are malls. Dolmen City, Lucky One and Dolmen Mall Tariq Road are examples of how new markets serve as hyper-condensed urban cores.
Using satellite imagery over the past 15 years, negative (open) spaces were mapped to showcase urban development around these nodes. Their placement is strategic. Through the absorption of consumer attention, these malls anchor surrounding high-rise development and create retail-service ecosystems that uphold the precedent set by older commercial pattis.
Yet, in Karachi's context, this urban density comes at a grave cost. Unlike historic centres that grew in response to public need, the emergence of mall-centric cities reflects French sociologist Henri Lefebvre's concept of "abstract space", which is conceived by and for capital, often disconnected from infrastructural and ecological realities.
Water lines remain unchanged, sewerage systems overloaded, while vertical real-estate forests grow around malls, prioritising accessibility for consumption over sustainability. This evolution reshapes the city's skyline, replacing communal space with transactional zones.
So who is to blame for this unregulated transformation of Karachi's cityscape and why are the laws designed to prevent such issues proving to be ineffective?
ZONING LAWS AND THE POLITICS OF COMMERCIALISATION
The fault in this regard lies not in our stars, but in ourselves -- so let's illustrate this issue with an example.
On March 13, 2025, the SBCA proposed to amend Chapter 19 of the Karachi Building and Town Planning Regulations (KBTPR) 2002. This clause allowed the redefinition of plots meant for "residential use" to more revenue-driven establishments, including educational centres, healthcare clinics and for other recreational purposes. Framed as "a change for the public good", it obscured the distinction between residential, amenity and commercial plots, disrupting legal and architectural zone-planning.
However, the SBCA's proposition faced widespread criticism for breaching constitutional and administrative jurisdiction. Civil society actors, including Shehri - Citizens for a Better Environment and the Public Interest Law Association of Pakistan (PILAP), among other public-interest petitioners, highlighted to the Sindh High Court that the role of re-categorising land-use is reserved with planning authorities such as the KDA or the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), instead of the SBCA.
Petitioners further referenced Articles 9 and 14 of Chapter 1, Part II of the Constitution of Pakistan, in particular the right to life and privacy -- highlighting that this attempt to broaden the scope of "residential use" unilaterally was an unlawful exercise of power that threatened the existing legal framework, public space protection and civic amenities. Bhai stated that these "cul-de-sacs are being turned into cash-cows", transforming the built-environment of residential neighbourhoods without any public input.
The High Court acknowledged the matter on April 8, 2025 and issued notices to the SBCA, KDA and KMC, halting the implementation of the clause. Met with increasing civic pressure, legal review and questions over jurisdiction, the SBCA withdrew the notification on May 13, 2025.
However, this incident is far from an isolated episode and merely sheds light on a broader pattern of unplanned development and legal circumvention. In the 1980s, zone-planning across Karachi generally allowed neighbourhoods around Gulshan-i-Iqbal and North Nazimabad to develop buildings that were ground floor plus one (G+1) and ground floor plus two (G+2). High-rises were scarce and necessitated civic infrastructure guarantees.
By the 1990s, however, there was a significant shift: commercial corridors were planned along previously low-density areas such as Sharae Faisal, Tariq Road and University Road, opening the door to mid-rise G+4 developments.
During the 2000s, the KBTPR 2002 institutionalised this shift in development by upgrading the Floor Area Ratios (FARs) from 1.75:1 to 3:1, or even 4:1 -- which allowed the construction of more total covered floor space on the same plot of land, thus leading to much more vertical development -- and enabling developers to escape liability by paying amnesty fees, allowing practices that benefit the builders. As architect Arif Belgaumi notes, "Nobody builds 100 percent of what is allowable, they build 120 percent."
Once, a single family was housed on a residential plot in areas such as Gulshan, Hyderi or Jauhar. Now, 50 to 60 families, often over 1,000 people, including service staff, occupy the same space in high-rises reaching G+40. This increases the burden on the nearby roads and on G+2/3 buildings, in terms of water, energy and waste management.
This desire for high-rise construction is a constant cause of concern, because such projected structures hinder wind rotation and sunlight, thereby worsening air quality. Despite these pressures, the SBCA's intervention is rare.
Despite the Supreme Court ban on using residential and amenity plots for commercial use, 930 conversions have taken place in Karachi since the start of 2024, as per the SBCA's own admission. This increasing disconnect between law and implementation reveals what urban planner Ananya Roy calls "informality from above", when the state selectively enforces or suspends rules to enable speculative development under a façade of legality.
This prompts an important inquiry into where our policies go from here, emphasising the role of legal mechanisms in pushing public interest development or facilitating selective evasion of laws. Such regularised inconsistency makes urban governance unpredictable in issuing and amending commercialisation laws.
THE COLLAPSE OF REGULATIONS
The issue of scale plays a critical role in a city such as Karachi, where most of the development takes place under the aegis of the builder mafia, without any Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or structural research and development.
No Objection Certificates (NOCs) have existed since pre-Partition, while EIAs became mandatory in 1994 under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act of 1997. They were designed to ensure sustainable urban development, without causing lethal damage to the ecology. However, they have been reduced to hollow bureaucratic rituals, routinely used to fast-track construction with little oversight.
Belgaumi and urban planner Farhan Anwar deem Karachi's EIA process as a "bureaucratic formality." Assessments are typically carried out by builder-hired consultants focused solely on individual plots, ignoring neighbourhood-level impacts. Public hearings are treated as technical requirements rather than spaces for genuine scrutiny. Mitigations are rarely explored, and community feedback is sidelined. The Bahria Icon Tower on the Clifton Promenade is a prominent example of carrying out construction without paying much heed to EIAs and the legal viability of a project -- while also endangering heritage sites for its construction.
Endangered heritage sites are often scapegoated for disrupting ecology, but it is powerful developer groups that are reshaping Clifton's landscape. In Old Clifton, developers, supported by the police, reportedly demolished a heritage bungalow to make way for a high-rise, destroying banyan trees and displacing migratory birds in the process. Due to such constructions, Clifton is now a concrete expanse, commodified at the expense of ecological and cultural memory.
Over 200 high-rises along major arteries, such as Sharae Faisal, were built without proper planning, fire exits or emergency systems. The SBCA issued NOCs and completion certificates without site inspections or consulting the KMC. There are countless such examples.
Hence, EIAs and NOCs are no longer safeguards. They legitimise reckless development and ignore transparency and public accountability. The disastrous impact of this is on display across the city.
The ecological toll caused by unregulated high-rise developments is undeniable. Bhai notes the increasing vertical growth in KDA schemes. These areas were never designed for such high density. Consequently, parking needs, unfiltered carbon monoxide and unsanctioned commercial activities worsen residential life.
She also highlights the sewerage outbursts under the Clifton Bridge, which lead to unhygienic living conditions. Residents report that in places such as Gulshan, hot, dust-heavy wind flows in one direction, or not at all, while natural light is blocked due to narrow setbacks and cantilevered floors.
Continuing from Amber Ali Bhai's argument, urban planners also critique not adhering to zonal planning. The vertical construction is widely critiqued because areas meant for G+1 or G+2 are obliterated by the seepage of high rises into them. Belgaumi furthers this critique by emphasising how high-rise construction has eliminated gardens and permeable surfaces, aggravating flood risks and temperature rises. The risk of flooding across Karachi is on display every year during the monsoon season in the city.
As a result, it is the citizens inhabiting these urban spaces that are forced to contend with the hard realities of living in such localities.
SOCIAL RELATIONS IN URBAN BUILT-ENVIRONMENTS
In densely populated Karachi neighbourhoods such as Gulshan and Hyderi, the wall-to-wall vertical expansion has hindered the natural light and ventilation flow. Residents living in bungalows and on lower floors of high-rises are subject to accumulated heat and lack of air circulation. Architect and urban planner Arif Hasan describes the absence of fundamental necessities and notes, "Everybody has a right to some fresh air and some light."
Such eco-spatial limitations then materialise into psychological and physiological concerns, and residents report increased mental strain and respiratory problems. A 2021 survey conducted by the Urban Resource Centre (URC) in Karachi found that nearly 64 percent of respondents living in newer vertical buildings in Gulshan Block 13-D and Hyderi complained of chronic discomfort related to heat and poor air flow.
Using 15 years of satellite imagery, this research mapped the changing landscape of Clifton Block 1 and Gulistan-i-Jauhar in five-year increments. The results reveal an uneven and increasingly stark ratio between green space and high-rise construction, especially in the case of Clifton Block 1. While Gulistan-i-Jauhar could already be considered dense and a heavily developed neighbourhood in 2010, Clifton Block 1 highlights a sharper trajectory. While green spaces shrink at an alarming pace in both zones, the latter witnesses an aggressive rise in vertical construction, with little thought given to the residents living in its shadows.
The reformation of roads such as Rashid Minhas Road and Bilawal Chowrangi into commercial corridors has not only significantly eradicated green spaces but worsened traffic congestion, noise pollution and water accumulation during the rains.
Over the course of history, zones, including Gulshan-i-Iqbal and Kharadar, were distinguished by their interwoven community living, inclusive of shared alleyways, courtyards and parks that allowed for everyday, informal human interaction. Instead, the proliferation of towering structures and high-rise-living has substituted social engagement with an isolated anonymous lifestyle. The lack of communal spaces has drastically decreased neighbourhood monitoring and reduced social cohesion.
Both the social and ecological ramifications of this kind of construction are resulting in immediate consequences and also more long term issues, and no amount of real-estate projects presented under the garb of 'sustainability' can help reverse the damage -- instead, they only exacerbate it.
THE GREENWASHING OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT
While Karachi chokes on and drowns in the ecological cost of vertical expansion, a more insidious form of development plays out along its coastline.
Real-estate giants often market projects as sustainable utopias that feature biodiversity parks and oceanfront boardwalks. But this is greenwashing, not conservation. Some are aggressively changing the landscape of Clifton by buying out old historical properties and turning them into vertical dreamscapes. And other developers are developing projects on contested lands. Across Sindh's coastal belt, from Hawke's Bay to Thatta, Sujawal and Badin, ecological zones once designated for preservation are now being transformed into peri-urban real-estate hubs.
This is happening despite initiatives such as the internationally backed Delta Blue Carbon project, which aims to restore mangrove forests and generate carbon credits. Some projects misappropriate the language of climate action, however, without offering genuine environmental benefits. Built on reclaimed tidal lands, they displace mangroves, reduce biodiversity, and fail to contribute to verified carbon offsets.
Gated developments in Korangi Creek and DHA Phase VIII have further narrowed creeks, shrunk fish nurseries and worsened urban flooding. Certain projects at Hawke's Bay violate environmental laws and erase fisherfolk communities, undermining climate resilience. In a city where EIA systems fail centrally, what chance does Karachi's fragile coastline have?
Mangroves are among the most carbon-dense ecosystems on earth. Their destruction is not just an ecological loss, it's a carbon bomb. No amount of rooftop gardens can change that.
MAKING THE CULPRIT PAY
So, as South Asian cities hurtle toward hyper-urbanisation, the question is no longer whether development will continue, but how it can sustain rather than destroy. Karachi's unregulated vertical growth collides with ecological fragility. Amid this, the Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) offers a path toward accountability.
First introduced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1972 and endorsed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the PPP has gained new traction at recent UN climate summits as a framework for loss and damage financing. Its logic is simple: those who profit from environmental harm must be financially and legally responsible for mitigation and restoration.
At the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27), then-climate change minister Sherry Rehman championed climate justice and the operationalisation of PPP. But this commitment remains largely rhetorical at home. Pakistan demands justice globally but falls short in regulating local polluters, especially in booming sectors such as construction.
Cement, for instance, accounts for approximately eight percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Karachi developers must shift to low-carbon alternatives such as green cement, and the SBCA must enforce this shift, particularly for high-volume projects.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification offers another pathway. While optional globally, SBCA could mandate a Karachi-specific version, requiring just one to two percent of project budgets for green roofs or solar panels. This small investment brings huge environmental returns.
In a region where the urban poor suffer from climate change the most, the PPP isn't just policy -- it's a means for justice. If Karachi is to grow upwards, it must also grow responsibly, ensuring that those who profit also protect.
SAVING THE CITY FROM ITSELF
Karachi has evolved into a metropolis that is increasingly hostile to its own residents, where floods, heat and congestion are not natural inevitabilities but man-made crises. To help reverse this tide, Karachi's development paradigm must shift. This means, among other things, reviving long-neglected master planning processes with genuine community participation, holding polluters accountable and embedding environmental safeguards in real-estate projects.
The illusion of progress in Karachi cannot only be measured by skylines. Instead valuing breathable air, accessible green spaces and social cohesion must be seen as markers of true urban prosperity. Without such a recalibration, the city risks drowning further -- not only in rainwater, but in its own failures of imagination.
This essay is dedicated to Karachi's old neighbourhoods, which have been aggressively impacted by the capitalistic longings of developers and isolated real estate methodologies disrupting ecosystems and infrastructural rights