Current Magazine

People cool off near a damaged water pipe.
By 2025, Karachi Is Expected To
Surpass 20 Million Inhabitants.
Behind its expansion lies the convergence of two broader
trends , natural population growth and migration to the cities.
Pakistan’s overall population is growing rapidly. Those who do
not already live in cities want to live in them, and Karachi is
their first choice.
In the last 25 years, the city’s population has more than
doubled. By 2025 it is expected to have surpassed 20 million.
But as more and more people make Karachi their home, it
is becoming less and less habitable — a paradox shared with
many developing-world megacities.
When Pakistan became independent in 1947, Karachi
was home to around half a million people. Today, it has 16
million. How has Karachi housed them? The city , in the
abstract sense of its institutions, has not. Instead, the people
have housed themselves through an unregulated construction
sector, and the city , in the concrete sense , is their creation.
Grand schemes for the city’s expansion, poorly implemented,
have been rendered obsolete. “There are so many
governing agencies and bodies in Karachi,” says Sobia Kaker,
a researcher at LSE Cities, a center at the London School
of Economics. “They don’t follow any master plan and that
creates chaos.”
Like other large cities in the region, Karachi is vibrant,
chaotic, polluted and overcrowded. Unlike them, it is also
very violent, with a homicide rate that has been described as
“Latin American” — closer to that of Bogotá than Mumbai.
Much of that violence is political, a by-product of Karachi’s
unique history. The city’s population are mostly migrants,
refugees or their descendants, whose presence in Karachi can
be traced to a series of regional conflicts. As they have settled
the city the strife that brought them there has been focused on
a smaller stage, in struggles for homes and influence.
48 CURRENT FALL 2017