Appropriate Building Design for Uch and Other Cities of Southern Punjab

A failure to response to these changes has led to uncomfortable and expensive homes and community buildings; a degraded social and physical environment; considerable social stress since space and function do not correspond to changing needs and aspirations; destruction of valuable cultural heritage and a loss of traditional centuries old methods of construction.

CRC’s work has addressed all the issues mentioned above and in the process it has developed:

• a methodology of research to understand the processes of change and the actors involved in them;
• human resources to carry out social and technical research;
• a system to analyse and document research; and
• turn the documentation into extension and technical literature.

However, this work needs to be followed up with other programmes and projects if it is to be meaningfully used and incorporated into government policy and for use by NGOs, academic institutions and the formal and informal private sector and communities.

5. Recommendations

Under the TOR for the Project, the CRC is available for providing technical advice to organisations and individuals who wish to build in accordance with its proposals. However, the UNDP needs to seriously consider building on what the Project has achieved. In this connection the following should be undertaken.

• A process should be established for making available to all relevant organisations a video of the process of construction and construction details of the two buildings that the CRC has/is designed/designing.
• The government of the Punjab should be encouraged to take a policy decision whereby the CRC developed designs, techniques and processes are used for all public sector buildings in southern Punjab. In addition, the CRC manual should be made a part of the curriculum of all technical schools and polytechnics in southern Punjab.
• A national workshop of professional colleges and universities should be organised in which the CRC process and outputs should be presented. A small five member committee of academics should be created (as a result of the workshop) to oversee a change in curriculum so as to incorporate the outputs of CRC’s work.
• A national workshop should be arranged for important government departments that deal with construction and works so as to inform them of CRC’s work and receive feedback from them.
• CRC manual should be translated into Urdu as a whole. It should also be broken down into shorter publications for different types of interest groups so that it can come effective extension literature.
• And most important of all, how can CRC continue with the work it has begun? How and for what aspect of it can it be supported?