Pakistan Mapping Study

This study is about how mapping is done in Pakistan for planning purposes. It focuses in on the Lyari Town in Karachi which is an administrative area of the city inhabited for the most part by low income communities.

Pakistan is divided into provinces and provinces into districts. Karachi is a city district in the province of Sindh and it is further divided into 18 towns and the towns into union councils (UCs). Each district and town has its own indirectly elected nazim (mayor) and have considerable autonomy to raise funds and plan and implement development.

Survey of Pakistan Mapping is a federal institution that prepares maps of Pakistan cities. Previously, this was done by ariel photography but more recently it is being done in collaboration with Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), which is a national space agency and has a wide range of remote sensing data projects. SUPARCO’s mapping has still to be used by city governments for planning purposes.

Plans for informal settlements in Pakistan are generally not available. However, the Orangi Pilot Project- Research and Training Institute (OPP-RTI) in Karachi has mapped and digitized over 300 informal settlements and their infrastructure. For the Karachi Development Plan 2000, maps through remote sensing were prepared in 1987. However, due to financial and institutional constraints, they were neither updated nor used effectively for planning processes.

Download the full report: Pakistan Mapping Study [PDF, 1.7 MB]