Urban transformations: brokers, collaborative governance and community building in Karachi’s periphery

Abstract

This essay reflects on the complexity of urban life in Karachi by exploring the politics of planning and community building in its urbanizing periphery. The periphery is an agrarian-pastoral stretch and sparsely populated region where villages (goths) were given usufruct rights during British rule. During General Pervez Musharraf’s (1999–2007) post-9/11, post-liberalization and decentralization phase, this vast expanse was subdivided and administratively merged with the City District Government Karachi (CDGK). The attempt to reshape the periphery by bringing it under the control of decentralized governance has unfolded in conjunction with the rapid growth of unplanned settlements. This essay delves into the roles of key state and non-state players around whom the market for land in the periphery is evolving: the NGO Orangi Pilot Project-RTI, land brokers or dalaals, and Board of Revenue officials or land masters. These players compete, negotiate and collaborate in diverse ways to control land and use their economic and social capital to engage the different layers of the state. The contestations and fluid negotiations between key social agents who facilitate land conversions and tenure rights provide a lens through which we can critically examine the urban politics that undergirds land and homeownership for poor groups.