Density Study of Low and Lower Income Settlements in Karachi

Excerpt from this presentation:

There is a growing trend in Asian cities to demolish low income informal settlements and relocate their residents in six to eight storey apartment blocks. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that:

low income groups are unhappy with the high-rise solutions for sociological reasons;

the units are expensive to maintain and instalments for lease or

ownership are more often than not unaffordable for the poor residents;

residents cannot carry out any informal businesses in the apartments;

the residents become poorer and some of them destitute. As a result, the majority of them sell their “possession” informally (if they can) at throw away prices and move back as renters to informal settlements in the city centre.

This file is available for download: P03_ Density Study of Low and Lower Income Settlements in Karachi [PDF, 4.3 MB]