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Arif Hasan, International Institute of Environment and Development, Pakistan
Poor residents in South Asian cities live together in high numbers that easily surpass the limits set in planning regulations. What can be done to create more housing for the poor?
Urban planners in South Asia are always advised by Northern experts to make their settlements more densely populated if urban sustainability is to be achieved. But their task is formidable given that the world’s three most densely populated megacities, Dhaka, Mumbai and Karachi, are all in South Asia. The poor live together in high numbers surpassing all building byelaws and zoning regulations for these cities. The rules are often flouted, particularly in both informal and formal settlements where residents earn low incomes.
Results from density-related studies, supported by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) on Karachi, Bangkok and Kathmandu, plus research material on Mumbai by Alain Bertaud, tell us a lot about the challenges the cities’ inhabitants face. Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, has 2,280 people living on each hectare of the city. But this average figure masks the disparities in living conditions experienced by the city’s wealthiest and poorest inhabitants. Parts of Karachi’s inner city have more than 4,000 persons living on each hectare of land. This is in violation of byelaws which permit a maximum of 1,625 persons per hectare. Meanwhile, Karachi’s elite settlements have densities as low as 200 persons per hectare. Individual residential plots of more than 0.2 hectares can be found in elite settlements. To put this in perspective, one family is living on enough land to house 800 people if it was occupied as densely as it is in the city’s poorer areas.
Nepal’s capital city, Kathmandu, is also growing. The city has an average density of 1,322 persons per hectare [PDF], but its inner city has 2,221 people per hectare. If Kathmandu’s byelaws were enforced, a sizeable portion of the inner city population would have to be removed, according to IIED-supported research, which will soon be published.
Another measure that urban planners look at when analysing urban density is called the floor to ratio (FAR), the ratio of the footprint of an entire plot of land against the actual constructed area (which may be a building with many floors). According to Mumbai’s byelaws, the maximum residential FAR is 1:1.33. Mumbai has 3,230 people living per hectare. These density levels could never have been achieved if this floor-to-area ratio had been seriously enforced. Like other cities in Southern Asia, Mumbai’s informal settlements outstrip the permitted urban planning densities. Dharavi, a large slum, for instance, has densities as high as 44,460 people per hectare in its Chamra Bazar neighbourhood, according to a study by the Kamla Rajeja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture.
Bangkok, Thailand is different because the permissible floor to area ratio in residential