Zoning process must not affect ecology and heritage

Travelling on the main corridors of Karachi, one’s eyes cannot escape the site of the commercial sector’s inroads to the residential area and the resulting mix of the neighbourhoods. Both are intertwined in an inseparable manner. The liberalisation of the economy, the convenience of the residents, the evolved laxation in the land use/conversion regulations, the operational inefficiencies of the monitoring bodies, the demographic shifts and the changes in the family structures are pointed out by scholars and academics for this change. From a town planning perspective, the entire notion of zoning needs to be revisited. The spatial, temporal and usage in different ritual and festive periods and the usage of a certain space and place in various time zones, demands a revisit of the land zoning policy of Karachi City.

Zoning is the practice of demarcating a piece of land under municipal laws. That is, the practice is undertaken to regulate and govern the use of the property. Town and urban planning cannot be studied in isolation. It is a multi-disciplinary subject while taking social sciences, architecture, anthropology, public health, housing, public health and travel, transport and commutation defining its contour and making its content too. Zoning systems also struggle to react to as well as foresee and plan for the ‘best use’ for land in advance given the dynamic nature of real estate markets and wider socio-economic factors that influence land prices over time.

Some essential considerations of town planning are the provision of green belts across the town for obvious advantages, housing to upgrade the life of the residents and to determine the density, public buildings with parking facilities, recreational facilities, road systems, an efficient and affordable transport system and cemeteries. These considerations are operationalised by dividing the town into suitable zones such as commercial zones, industrial zones and residential zones with suitable regulations. In short, the main objective of town planning is summarised in four words: health, convenience, beauty, environment and heritage.

Literature suggests four specific categories of zoning: functional zoning, form-based zoning, intensity zoning and incentive zoning – classifying the use of land from diverse perspectives. Perhaps the most often-argued strength of regulatory planning using zoning is that it creates certainty for developers and landowners. As zoning allows a minimum level of development as of right, developers know in advance what they can build before they purchase land resulting in some level of ‘assured value’.

Most countries have developed some form of system, or systems, for regulating the development and use of land, allocating development rights, and anticipating and mitigating the environmental impacts of development. Yet the means used to undertake these tasks vary and are often contrasted as a spectrum between discretionary versus regulatory approaches. Discretionary planning systems are typically characterised as being flexible, with policies formed around terms such as ‘normally’, ‘may’, ‘ought to’, and ‘will consider’.

This emphasises the role of the decision-maker in using their professional judgment to take account of all the various factors involved, including those that someone making the rules at the time could not have anticipated, in order to reach a decision. The regulatory approach is much more specific, using terms such as ‘will/will not’, ‘should/should not’, and ‘can/cannot’. Here the role of the decision-maker is more limited as they are determining whether what is proposed is allowed based on specific predefined rules/laws or not, with little room for professional judgment as to the suitability of the proposal to the specific context and circumstances.

Coming back to the growth of the city along major corridors of movement, the zoning regulations and bye-laws have to respond to the needs of the city and the trends and directions of growth and change.

It is said in the literature that the task of the planners and the planning department is to know those trends. For that, the inventory of the changing forms in the built environment, the functions associated with those, the intensity and the density of the built environment and the incentives people see for future growth need to be accounted for.

For the sake of transparency, the gathered information should be in the public domain so that any change in land use should follow the prescribed laws, particularly that of the public hearing. And zoning for any change in land use needs to be particularly sensitive towards the existing public usage, ecology and the heritage of the City.

However, for effective zoning, the planners also need to consider the institutional constraints of the relevant institutions such as the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA). The role of the institution is to understand, implement and monitor and should require the minimum of bureaucratic delays.

Depending on the understanding and orientation of planners, the capacity of the institutions and the support of the administrative apparatus, zoning and the accompanying regulations can be used to benefit the citizenry or to contribute to the miseries by limiting their access to the required land and services. Accommodative zoning, as a reactive mode, on public demand, with the transparent process to adjust to the land use changes in consultation with stakeholders is the need of the City. While changes are made in the zoning of the land use, to address the practical issues of the public such as a loss of livelihoods and lifestyle needs to be kept in mind. The principles need to be reiterated: no zoning process should cause economic depression, kill the ecology and be lethal to the heritage. The knife in the hand of a murderer kills, but if you give it to a doctor he will heal with it. The application of land zoning and its associated regulations could not be better explained than the adage. The rest lies within the decision-making units.

*The writer is a PhD scholar and board member of the Urban Resource Centre, Karachi. mansooraza@gmail.com