By Students of the NED University’s Department of Architecture and Planning

Mohammadi Colony is a squatter settlement that is situated in close proximity to the port in Karachi. The colony is commonly known as Machhar Colony, not because of mosquitoes (although they do exist) but due to the heavy presence of fisherfolk — mostly of Bengali ethnicity — who are heavily involved in the fishing, shrimp-peeling, boat-making, and fishing net-making industry. But for years, authorities in Karachi have abandoned it on the pretext that it is an ‘illegal’ settlement.

Mohammadi Colony has thrived due to the absence of affordable housing for the poor elsewhere. Despite a failure of governance in providing housing or amenities, it is an ever-expanding locality with great demand for residential quarters. The rising population pressure, in turn, puts greater pressure on limited resources as well as the adjoining mangrove plantations which are felled as per residents’ or builders’ needs.

It also presents the classic problems of a slum in the urban jungle — lack of hygiene, proliferation of disease, lack of public spaces and amenities and scant attention to aesthetics.

But young blood tends to bring new ideas and idealism to antiquated problems and outdated conceptions. Enter the students of NED University’s Department of Architecture and Planning.

Eos presents here some elements of a project by them that re-imagines one of the oldest squatter settlements in Karachi. In many ways, it provides design solutions to what the government has been unable to solve. These interventions have been formulated after months of sociological research and architectural and planning feasibilities.

In this project, Mohammadi Colony has been reimagined using the four principles of urban planning outlined by renowned town planner Arif Hasan. These principles are:

1. Planning should respect the ecology of the areas in which the urban centres are located

2. Land use should be determined on the basis of social and environmental considerations and not on the basis of land value or potential land value alone

3. Planning should give priority to the needs of the majority population which, in the case of Asia, are low and lower-middle income communities, hawkers, informal businesses, pedestrians and commuters

4. Planning must respect and promote the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the communities that live in the city

The ideas presented here will hopefully be instructive for city administrations, not only for any future upgrading of Mohammadi Colony but also for other squatter settlements in the rest of the country.

LOCAL ECONOMY IN SYNC WITH THE ENVIRONMENT

The central hub of economic activity is actually two nullahs called the Moosa Lane Nullah and the Ahmed Shah Bukhari Road Nullah. The former runs along the main road while the latter, perpendicular to the Moosa Lane Nullah, runs across the breadth of the colony.

These nullahs actually serve to bring together the various ethnic groups residing in and around the colony. But usually, they are filled with debris and garbage. Economic activity around them includes roadside hawkers, tea shacks and the like. The encroachment of land in Machchar Colony has amplified over time, to the extent that the space around the nullahs and their catchment areas have also been covered with houses of various sizes. The natural flow of the nullahs have become a danger site where black water flows without being treated, resulting in various diseases. Heaps of garbage exist on vacant plots.

Housing units’ sprawl towards the mangroves has elevated the risk of natural disasters and has threatened the ecology of the area. This uncontrolled expansion has resulted in pressuring the almost absent infrastructure which includes the roads, sewage system and the utilities in the area.

The first step, therefore, is to re-imagine what the nullahs can be turned into. Once that is accomplished, we move on to other commercial sectors.

The premise of our intervention is to ensure that multiple spaces are provided to the community for recreational purposes. In an ideal world, a pilot project could be launched to form a neighbourhood that takes in both the urban and the natural environment. Our intervention, therefore, plans on dealing with environmental degradation first and then to bring in amenities such as schools, parks, clinics, parks, and flexible spaces for weekly bazaars.

We envisage the Ahmed Shah Bukhari Road Nullah to be converted into a central hub, with shaded hawkers, stalls, all tea shacks and food stalls. The provision of sitting places and animal shelters are provided in this schema. This nullah is already covered but there are heaps of garbage lining its sides. With our intervention, those sitting along the nullah will have plenty of space to loiter around or do business.

All of these functions were already present here but not in an organised manner. The purpose of our intervention is to induce harmony between the natural and the physical environment, which was lacking before.

Meanwhile, the Moosa Lane Nullah ought to be treated, making it a safer site with trees and landscaping planted to improve the air quality. As is, because of the nullah and fishery activities, the air quality of the locality has severely been degraded. The existing haphazard commercialisation of the area has resulted in fewer green zones and almost no trees.

Seepage is also another significant problem present here, making the houses of the residents vulnerable to collapse. The Moosa Lane Nullah has no wall to resist flooding in the monsoons. As most houses are made using temporary construction methods, they have no proper planning and are very irregular. The area is moving towards vertical growth now, with up to six storeyed structures beginning to emerge.

We envisage that the Moosa Lane Nullah will be treated using the sedimentation method and a paved path will be constructed along its peripheries in order to collect waste from the nullah surface through waste collecting machines and dumpers. Simultaneously, the river bank can be strengthened by providing an RCC Retaining Wall which will prevent sewage water from penetrating into residential units. Moreover, planting indigenous breeds of trees will not only improve the micro climate of the area but also increase people’s interaction with each other.

With both nullahs covered and their flow regularised, we move on to the cottage industries that exist in Mohammadi Colony. These include shrimp peeling, fishing-net making and fish packaging, all of whom employ labour from Machhar Colony. All these sectors are labour-intensive, and therefore, women and children are often employed at lower wages than usual.

So, for example, about 200 kilos of shrimp are typically delivered by one van to warehouses on a daily basis. Shrimp peelers start peeling at dawn till their completion of work. When all shrimp are cleaned, they are delivered back to companies by the owner of warehouse.

Similarly, fishing-net makers are located around the fish harbour and near Machhar Colony, in large part because that is their market and most buyers exist here and the Nayabad locality nearby. Fishing-net makers typically charge 10,000 rupees for a single net. It takes 36 hours to complete a net which is worth between 50,000 rupees and 70,000 rupees.

All such activities serve as the lifeline of Mohammadi Colony.

But these are mostly taking place in private compounds, often with no government oversight on production and hygiene.

Our intervention proposes bringing these industries to the fore, nestled in demarcated commercial zones and warehouses. At present, land use is not segregated into residential and commercial areas. What we are proposing is a separate zone away from residential quarters that can house various activities.

Shrimp peeling, for example, can be done in purpose-built units that employ modern techniques. Trash that is now disposed of in an empty plot, for example, can be sorted and recycled at a designated fill site. And so on.

BUILDING HUMANE HOUSING

Residents of Machhar Colony have always been under the threat of eviction.

These threats do not allow residents to properly maintain their homes and they don’t have enough money to buy a leased plot or a house either. Since the government has abandoned this locality, infrastructure is poorly laid, the streets are getting narrower because of encroachments, and illegal commercialisation is the norm.

But because Machhar Colony is an unplanned colony, it has irregular plot sizes.

So, for example, three percent of the plots are sized 20-40 sq. yards and usually only have a ground floor. Then there are 40-60 sq. yard plots that are about 16 percent of the total; these also have a single floor. When it comes to 60-80 sq. yard plots, they number about 20 percent of the total. These structures tend to have two floors (ground plus one).

Then there are the 80-120 sq yard plots which are 26 percent of the total. These have a built-up height of ground plus one and ground plus two. A fourth floor is usually seen in 120-180 sq. yard houses, about 13 percent of the total. A similar trend is seen in 180-260 sq. yard plots; numbering about 10 percent of the total, these are usually ground plus three but sometimes, they also have a fifth and sixth floor.

The largest sized plots measure about 260 sq. yards or more. These are about 12 percent of the total. And they usually have four floors but sometimes also have five and six floors.

Another way of reading the situation is through the number of bedrooms per housing unit. So, there were about 45 percent one-bedroom units, 25 percent two-bedroom units, 15 percent three-bedroom units, and eight percent four-bedroom units. These are mostly temporary structures, some areas are still being built, while some others are going to be turned into permanent structures later on.

What we discovered was that in one-bedroom units, there is only one family residing whereas in three- and four-bedroom units, there were joint families in residence. According to one of the residents, the size of a rented room is generally eight feet by eight feet. Most houses do not have windows and so, there is no cross-ventilation. This size of houses constructed is naturally very small for single families let alone joint families, and undoubtedly, creates congestion and suffocation.

Moreover, almost all of Machhar Colony doesn’t follow a regular grid pattern. This means that this locality has grown through encroaching space. Many have made their houses by encroaching upon the street and leaving only a portion for vehicles to pass through. Plot boundaries tend to extend to the streets for different uses, including commercial activities as well as parking purposes. With road width varying throughout, there are many congestion points for pedestrians as well as for vehicular access.

All these factors contribute to congestion and pressure on housing.

The inability of the urban government bodies to cater to these issues has given rise to informal/illegal self-help trends in both residential and commercial sectors. With the rapid horizontal expansion of squatter settlements (occupied mostly by those who seek to reside in proximity to their employment zones) the vulnerability of mangroves has also drastically increased, which is a threat to the city’s ecology.

Our intervention is about humane housing: where there is adequate space of living and enough space for air to breathe and sunlight to enter. These homes are envisioned as affordable and modular housing units which are seismically secure and safe from frequent flooding of the Moosa Lane Nullah.

These are two conceptual plays that we have, the first is in terms of using existing structures and the second is about rebuilding from scratch. Here we are presenting the latter: the image below presents a residential unit that utilises 120 sq yards and is a ground plus one structure. Space for a 20-feet-wide street has also been left in our proposals.

These units can house 12 members of a family, have three bedrooms, a lounge, a ventilated kitchen, two toilets and a small patio.

MACHHLI BY THE MANGROVES

Machhar Colony is a damning indictment of how the physical environment contributes to financial situations.

It has a sprawl of 352 acres but, since the colony is very densely populated, new demand for housing means that the colony continues to expand towards the mangroves.

And since it is all unplanned, the tangible factors of house layout, open space, commercialisation, employment places, and amenities influence the intangible factors of social ills, security, health and literacy rates. These factors tend to influence people’s reliance on mangroves — chopping trees for firewood, for example. The felling of mangroves, in turn, is an environmental catastrophe not just for the colony’s residents but also for the rest of the city.

The solution that we envisage is marrying the two needs together: mangroves for the city’s ecological health and a recreational area by the mangroves.

Since it is all unplanned, the tangible factors of house layout, open space, commercialisation, employment places, and amenities influence the intangible factors of social ills, security, health and literacy rates. These factors tend to influence people’s reliance on mangroves.

Our proposal is to convert the area next to the mangroves into a recreational space with seating areas by the sea and restaurants and bazaars operating behind. For no further development near the mangroves, the central spine will have a cul-de-sac and from that point no vehicle can go further. A fish bazaar also can be included in this schema to ensure that the area by the mangroves is used for productive activities.

The advantage of building the locality this way is that with most residents occupied in fishing and associated industries, the people of Machhar Colony shall be able to buy and sell fish, shrimps and other seafood by the mangroves — not just for locals but also for outsiders who come into the colony.

According to the Sindh Coastal Community Development Project, the extensive mangrove swamps of Sindh are spread over approximately 100,000 hectares. The black mangrove, with aerial roots growing up out of the mud, is the most common specie. Mangrove swamps, creeks and mudflats serve as a breeding ground for a diverse variety of marine life along the Sindh coastline, such as mussels, oysters, shrimp and fish, which move offshore as they grow. Some species of migratory birds, too, use the swamps as wintering grounds.

It is not just animals and vegetation that are supported by the vast ecosystem formed by Sindh’s mangroves. The 100,000 people living along the northern edge of the Indus Delta use an estimated 18,000 tons of mangrove firewood each year, while the leaves and shoots are used as fodder for livestock.

Protecting people and mangroves, therefore, are objectives that must be met together rather than prioritising one over the other.

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 31st, 2019