Renowned architect and town planner Arif Hassan delivered a pair lecture with Dr Johann Jessen, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Stuttgart, Germany, on “Urban Development in the 21st century” at the Goethe-Institut on Tuesday.

Arif Hasan, Chairman of the Urban Resource Centre (URC) and founder member of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), focused on the aspects relevant to Karachi, since his organisation primarily fights against eviction, gentrification and degradation of the inner city.

Talking about the new paradigm in urban development, Hassan underlined the fact that it had encouraged high rise apartments as opposed to upgraded settlements, and flyovers and elevated expressways as opposed to traffic management and planning. He also spoke about the consequences of devolution, according to which, he claimed, planning is now being done only for the period for which a government is in power.

Revealing some statistics about Karachi, Hassan disclosed that 70 per cent of households earned less than Rs10,000 monthly on an average and “from that income they spend at least seven per cent on food while rest goes into utilities.”

Hassan also shared the findings of a survey according to which 100 couples were randomly interviewed in Karachi. Amazingly, 83 per cent were interested in migrating for numerous reasons that included lack of justice and freedom. “Moreover they believed they would never be able to own a place to live in,” he pointed out.

Prof. Jessen, in his lecture, discussed the current problems and strategies regarding urban and regional development in Germany. He talked about the predominant trends in urban development there and the demographic change in the former East Germany that had become a major reason of the shrinking of cities there. The current birth rate of the country is 1.3 whereas it should be 2.1 to keep the population stabilised, disclosed Jessen. Consequently, he said, a sizeable number of dwellings had been demolished in the Eastern half. Around 200,000 housing units had been demolished between 2002 and 2007 while another 400,000 units are to be demolished by the end of the current year.

Interestingly the demolition of what were mainly high rises have now been replaced by town houses and also by parks, in many instances, Jessen disclosed while sharing the pictures of those town houses with the audience.

Talking about the impact of economic decline on Eastern German Cities, the German speaker said that the unemployment rate has persistently gone up. “A higher percentage of people are depending on social welfare and the land value is decreasing,” he said.

In Germany, urban planning has been based on four policies including the improvement in economic competitiveness of city regions, protection of natural resources, support to the social and cultural cohesion and finally the achievement of living conditions of “equal value” for the urban and rural sectors.

The German architect discussed two of the urban projects in Germany - Hamburg HafenCity and Leipzig - that are under development and high expectations are associated with them. Comprising 1.7 million inhabitants, the second largest state of Germany, Hamburg HafenCity will be situated along the coastline and will have residential projects, offices, restaurants and would be developed by 2020-25 according to the master plan.

After conducting paired lectures on the topics of Gender Justice and Education, Goethe-Institut Pakistan had organised this third paired lecture in collaboration with the German-Educated Pakistani Welfare Association (GEPWA).