Housing and Physical Planning

B. MAIN CONCERNS

11. General Concerns

11.1 Deteriorating housing conditions

As discussed in the situation analysis, housing conditions all over Pakistan are deteriorating rapidly due to the absence of government capacity, capability and will to deal with the problem; the development of unserviced informal settlements; absence of appropriate support systems to existing informal and formal housing processes; free market mechanisms that create unnatural land prices and the absence of legislations to deal with this problem; and the breakup of old forms of governance and production systems.

11.2 Repercussions of deteriorating conditions

These conditions are creating immense environmental problems leading to disease, tenure and physical insecurity, violence, political and social alienation and economic exploitation, of which the worst victims are women and children. As such improved housing conditions are a very important part of political, social and economic restricting and/or reconstruction.

12. Absence of Appropriate Designs and Delivery Systems

12.1 Design

  1. Housing and neighbourhood design in Pakistan, as promoted by the formal sector is incompatible with social, climatic, economic and cultural reality of the majority of the people of Pakistan and is responsible for a great deal of inconvenience and stress, both mental and physical, to the people it serves. Again, women, who are the end users of this product are more effected by these shortcomings than men.
  2. Training of professionals, both abroad and in Pakistan, continues to be carried out on the First World model. Therefore, things are not likely to change as planning will continue to be done in the foreseeable future as it is being done now. In addition, there is very little action research that is being carried out to develop new standards, design requirements and technological alternatives that respond to the needs of the target groups.
  3. The informal sector, because of the need of its beneficiaries to seek regularisation for tenure security, has also adopted the formal sectors planning standards for neighbourhood layouts.

12.2 Delivery and support systems

  1. Delivery of credit and marketing systems for housing and related infrastructure fail to service the needs of lower and lower middle income groups who form the vast majority of the population. This is in spite of the fact that pilot projects in the country have developed strategies that make delivery of housing and related services possible and affordable to the poor.
  2. Laws for promoting employer built housing are not applied and steps to promote such housing through incentives are not designed and implemented. Thus, lower income formal sector employees are also denied access to the land and housing market.
  3. Although the informal sector serves over 90 percent of the needs of lower and lower middle income groups, it receives no technical, managerial and credit support from the formal sector or training to improve its product and enhance is capacity and capability. Similarly, its clients also do not have access to advisory services for design and construction.

13. Ownership of Homes

Allotment of plots and houses both in the formal sector development schemes and in katchi abadisand slum regularisation programmes are made out in the name of men. Even in the case of women headed households tradition makes it difficult for women to hold property in their names although there is no legal or religious bar to it. This makes a woman very vulnerable as she can, if she is divorced, find herself on the street, without a place to go to and in no position to lay claim to the property she helped create and maintain.

14. Absence of Institutional Arrangements

There is an absence of political will, appropriate institutional arrangements, professionals, and vision to develop and deliver a national housing programme that is compatible with the sociology and economics of the poor and with the state of Pakistan’s economy, although requisite models exist.

15. Absence of Women at all levels as actors in the housing drama

Women, who, as it has been said earlier, are the end users ofthe product, do not have any say in determining policies regarding housing or the design and construction elements of housing, neighbourhoods or the infrastructure that serves them. Even as architects and planners they do not perceive design requirements from the point of view of women users because they have not been trained to do so.

C. RECOMMENDATIONS

16. Policy

  1. Government should become a facilitator of housing processes (formal and informal) rather than a producer. To do this
    • It must carry out necessary institutional changes to make this role possible.
    • Train and orient its planners and the implementing agencies in the new role.
    • Introduction courses that are relevant to the new approach at professional universities and colleges.
    • Develop/facilitate the development of and involve communities and cooperatives in the housing process.
    • Develop flexible and appropriate standards that can be upgraded incrementally.
  2. Develop legislations that make land acquisition for housing low income groups and land-assembly possible.
  3. Adopt the Khuda-ki-Basti and OPP model for land delivery and services provision for housing and see if it can be extended (with modifications) to the rural areas as well. This can be done through pilot projects.
  4. Rationalise credit systems for housing so as to reach lower and lower middle income groups (especially women) and ensure recovery.
  5. Develop mechanisms whereby the needs of women in housing design, delivery and 0 and M can be reflected in policy and implementation and the constraints of involving them in the process in both the formal and informal sectors can be eased.
  6. Take a firm decision not to take any international loans for housing but to meet the targets by arriving at an optimum relationship between needs, standards and resources while accepting that all of these three components are dynamic.
  7. Developing legislature, rules and procedures that make it compulsory that all formal sector allotments/purchases of land and housing units will be jointly in the names of husband and wife and to promote this concept in informal sector transactions.

17. Programmes and Their Implementation

17.1 Research and pilot projects for development of ‘facilitation of housing’ concept

As a first step towards becoming a facilitator of housing processes the government should develop a research project. The project should consist of

  • research, and collection of research that has already been done, to determine the processes that are in operation in the housing drama in Pakistan and their problem areas and potentials;
  • determine the nature of support they require and the expertise that is available for this on a national level;
  • identify the institutional changes that would be required to make the facilitation role possible;
  • identify training needs, both for the formal and informal sectors; changes in professional education curriculum and the persons who could help achieve this
  • identify procedures through which women can have/develop a say in housing and physical planning policy and implementation systems
  • develop pilot projects for initiating the facilitation concept.

Implementation: Research should be carried out for the relevant government departments by an independent group of consultants with support from women’s groups from all the four provinces of Pakistan. The pilot projects identified by the research should be launched as autonomous projects under municipal, local government and/or development authorities. They should be monitored and documented by the consultants and should serve as training ground for government functionaries, professionals, students etc. Based on the pilot projects changes in government policies should be implemented at the end of the 8th Five Year Plan period.

17.2 Research into developing appropriate design standards and delivery and credit systems

Part of this research will be taken up by the research for the ‘facilitation of housing’ concept. However, research for design standards, technological systems and their extension will have to be taken up separately and can feed into the ‘facilitation’ research. An essential part of this research will be to look into women’s perceptions of what a house, its various components and the neighbourhood should be and how health, hygiene and social issues are related to these physical design solutions.

Implementation: The research should be carried out by consultants, if possible women, or women should be a part of the team. It should be carried out both for urban and rural areas and divided up into climatic zones. The result of this research should feed into the pilot projects set up under the ‘facilitation of housing’ concept;

One Comment

  1. Salam .dear we have no basic facilities in housning colonies plz think about us plz plz

    Posted January 1, 2020 at 9:09 am | PermalinkReply

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