“Please. Have mercy on us! Do not bulldoze our houses. We have been living here for three decades. We, the poor, also have the right to work and enjoy the capital city!”
Ignoring these pleas, the mighty officials of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) in Islamabad, Pakistan, continued to mow down the hutments. Law enforcement agencies were hovering around the territory of I-11 sector of the capital to prevent any resident or supporter from interfering with their official duty of evictions. In a matter of a few hours, the ground was cleared and the bulldozers were mounted on the long trailers for their return journey. The mission was successfully accomplished.
Talking to the reporters, a CDA official stated, “Encroachers and law breakers have no place in the capital city.” Someone asked: ‘But where should the poor go; they cannot afford the high rents. Don’t they have the right to live in the capital?”
“That is not our problem! Go and talk to the politicians who sit in the legislature and frame laws,” was the reply.
This short dialogue around a painful episode of evictions of low-income families from a reasonably old squatter settlement shows the many inequalities that infuse Islamabad today. The core question that needs to be answered is whether the plan, vision, decision and outcome of planning and building Islamabad, and transforming it into what it has become, was a worthwhile initiative.
As history tells us, when the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent was partitioned into two separate states in 1947, the administrative seats of New Delhi and Shimla remained in India. Mohammad Ali Jinnah decided to re-locate administrative establishments to Karachi: a port city in the southwest of Pakistan. His view was to retain the seat of the government in Karachi. It was popularly believed that Karachi was accessible to the folks of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by sea route. It had a reasonably developed urban infrastructure capable of supporting the capital functions.
And soon, with the mass migration of Muslims from all across India who opted to live in Pakistan, Karachi made for a desirable choice due to better options of education and employment.
Later, the government toyed with the idea of developing a new capital complex at a distance of about 25 kilometers from the existing city. The inspiration behind this move was the precedent of old and new Delhi, which was looked upon as a workable example. A Swedish firm, Merz Randal Vattan (MRV), was commissioned to prepare a plan for the entire region with a task to propose the layout of a new capital. This scheme was termed as the Greater Karachi Plan and was completed in 1951. Dissent to the idea of maintaining the capital in Karachi gradually emerged from the ranks of the military-bureaucracy nexus. Student and labor riots in the following years further unnerved the government. So, towards the mid-1950s, it was decided to move the capital away from Karachi.
CA Doxiadis, a planner who was already advising the government on physical planning and resettlement matters, was invited to undertake the task. After a series of studies, he proposed a site at the foot of Margalla Hills in northwest Pakistan, which was accepted by the military government of the time. This site was located west of the River Jhelum, close to the place where Alexander the Great defeated King Porus. The residents of East Pakistan became very unhappy with the decision to shift the capital from Karachi to Islamabad. Increase in travel time, high cost of travel and inconvenience were some of the reasons for this discontent. The government functionaries came up with a fantastic idea.
They decided that the country should have two capitals: one administrative and the other legislative.
There was a complex proposed and eventually built in Dacca (now Dhaka) to calm down the Bengali masses. The well-known Dhaka Assembly Building by Louis I. Kahn is a reminder of this initiative. The scheme was named Ayub Nagar (after the ruling military dictator Field Marshal Ayub Khan).
Doxiadis laid down the Islamabad scheme on his cherished principles of gridiron layouts, hierarchy of communities and evolving city center known as dynapolis.(Figure 1). The Islamabad scheme comprised the twin city of Rawalpindi, Margalla National Park and the new capital city. Four highways helped define the urban macro form of the proposed city. Southward, the Islamabad Highway led to Lahore; eastward Murree (now Kashmir) Highway connected to Murree and the surrounding environs; South-western Soan Highway connected to the central cities and the Capital Highway to Peshawar. However, only the Kashmir and Islamabad Highways have been built as per the original master plan.
Doxiadis intended to provide optimum choices in mobility and commuting. The ‘sectors’ of Islamabad – 2 km2 quadrants – made the basic unit of the plan. Arterial roads of 600 ft. width segregated the sectors, which principally comprised housing as the core function. However, these sectors were laid down according to different income groups. The central spine comprised the Blue Area: the core shopping and commercial spine of the city. Traffic was to be facilitated through a hierarchy of roads and streets possessing widths of 1200, 600 and 300 ft. and laid down at right angles (Figure 2). Local and collector roads and streets were also included in the physical plan in various sectors to promote pedestrian movement and bicycling.
The original plan of Doxiadis essentially included Rawalpindi as an integrated part of the capital scheme. However, institutional jurisdictions were defined in a different manner. Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) was soon developed to establish a unique and neutral character of the capital. This did not include Rawalpindi, which was managed by different institutions of the Punjab provincial government. Ironically, Islamabad has not received any elected local government till date and continues to be governed by an appointed administration. After substantial waiting, local government elections were finally held in November 2015 but a mayor is yet to be elected from the municipal representatives.
Thus, concerns and voices of its less privileged residents were not appropriately heard or incorporated in any scheme of development.
In the 1990s, a major revision of the master plan was carried out that enhanced the input of private developers in shaping Islamabad.
The city has come of age. Many changes have taken place over a period of time. From a sleepy town of a few thousand people in the 1970s, the city is estimated to have 1.124 million people. The population comprises a vast mix of public sector employees, offers, retired and serving military offers, corporate employees and staff, small and medium scale retailers, politicians, political workers, real estate entrepreneurs, bankers, travel service providers, traders and trade linkers and a multitude of other professionals (Figure 3).
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This diversity of occupational groups shows that the city is no longer a dull camp of government servants. The heterogeneous mix is certainly better. Dominant ethnicities include Punjabis and Pakhtuns with a lesser mix of Urdu speaking folk, Sindhis and Balochis. There are a sizeable number of foreigners due to the presence of diplomatic missions and international non-governmental organizations. The retail market trends reflect the presence of this cross section of the resident community. Extended bookstalls, restaurants serving western cuisines, clubhouses and boutiques displaying international fashion and consumer merchandise are visible examples. The promenades of Jinnah Super Market and other emerging shopping areas now show these trends in an aggressive manner (Figure 4).
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When Islamabad was shaping up, many believed that the city and its natural environment would remain pristine forever. The green belt and the extended plantation of mulberry trees would provide a near perfect environment for the top leadership and bureaucracy to work in. This expectation is falling apart. The number of vehicles on the streets is rising. Many heavy vehicles enter the city from the Kashmir Highway to by-pass the congestion of the Grand Trunk Road while travelling around Rawalpindi. Contrary to the spirit and prescription of the master plans, many industries have now found a home in the city. The most prominent categories include steel furnaces, steel melting, metal and acid works, marble cutting/grinding, brick making kilns and cement plants (in the suburbs). The city does not have a sewage treatment plant nor does it possess a sanitary landfill. More intensive land development is in the offing. New hotels including a seven-star complex, a new international airport in the vicinity, 40 large and small housing schemes and the army general headquarters are on the cards. Oil exploration work is also expected to take place in Margalla Hills, which will affect the air quality and overall urban environment.
Islamabad was supposed to be a capital for the country and its people, not just a city of the privileged, as it seems to have become. The options of housing for working classes are very few. There are some squatter settlements that exist without the security of tenure and absence of essential services, even though the CDA is quick to remove slums and squatters from various parts of the city, there are no designated locations for housing for urban poor (Figure 5). No such scheme appears to be in the pipeline either. Thus, ordinary folks have some justification to label Islamabad as the city of the rich. Perhaps the plan and vision of its founders were different from what it has become.
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