Mega Infrastructure Projects and their Impacts on the Urban Design of Karachi
Case of the Lyari Expressway Project
Preamble
Text | Asiya Sadiq Polack & Suneela Ahmed
urban development and mega projects to describe any scale and form of urban design interventions. The nomenclature used by the city agencies and professionals is reflective of a mindset which absolves itself from
the pre-requisite study and design of urban projects addressing the social-political and spatial networks involved in the making of aesthetically designed urban projects.
These design questions are constantly discussed and debated in all studios and forums at the department of architecture (DAP) at NED University. One such study of the local urban design issues and their situation in
practice and teaching, was undertaken in a 04 year long Euro-Asian, EU funded inter universities collaborative research and teaching projects called Asia link and Asia Urbs City Design and Capacity Building
Projects. 06 cases (in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India) including the Lyari Expressway Project (LEW) in Karachi were studied to assess urban design practices and impacts in south Asia. Several staff
members / researchers, students and studios were involved in these investigations and the cases were discussed in-depth in international workshops, seminars and a joint conference in 2007 in Sri Lanka.
The published results of these activities are available at the DAP-NED archives.
One of the most important finding was that research by design on urban issues must be a continuous process conducted via research based design studios and practice fed into city policies and plans by professional
work and advocacy. To ensure this an Urban Research and Design Cell (URDC) was setup at DAP-NED in 2007, which engages regularly in city research and design projects and disseminates the analysis and
information via seminars, articles, consultancies and professional practice of its members.
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