A city for all

Islamabad may be beautiful but the city is not without its can of worms. The proceedings of suo motu case number 3 of 2011 in the Supreme Court of Pakistan, commonly known as the Agro-Farms case, have raised the lid. The proceedings demonstrate in embarrassing detail how Islamabad’s skewed zoning regulations, and the way they have been selectively enforced, have contributed to making the city the remarkably poor-unfriendly place that it presently is. Yet, the case also gives rise to an exciting new possibility, which I highlight in the article, for turning this city of the privileged into a city for all.

The files of the case, which constitute public record, disclose that in the 1960s and 1970s, the CDA launched six different urban agriculture schemes in Islamabad: one each in Chak Shehzad, Murree Road, Sihala, Kahuta, and two in Tarlai. Through these schemes, around 2500 acres of pubic land on what was once the edge of the city, which had earlier been acquired by the government from villagers in the ‘public interest’, was sold off to 500 or so private individuals.

The plots were humungous by urban standards: between two acres to 10 acres each. Their price, on the other hand, was a pittance. The reason: public land was actually not being sold off; it was only being leased and the lease was subject to a laundry list of stringent conditions. The lease agreements vary amongst themselves somewhat, but the gist is the same: one could not build anything more than a single storey cottage; one had to work the land, and work it oneself, for ‘intensive’ farming; and on top of it, one had to actually go and sell one’s produce in the city’s weekly market, at ‘reasonable’ prices.

The rather naïve planners of the early era thought they were thereby creating intensive urban farms which would come to be inhabited by humble farmers toiling day and night to feed a largely self-sufficient city. Thus, the massive plot sizes and the low prices charged.

Little did the planners realise that these massive plots of land at the edge of the city would soon have nothing to do with agriculture. Instead, they would be turned into veritable suburban palaces for the country’s elite or into money-minting marriage halls or simply wastelands. Yet, an official survey conducted in 2009 and placed on the record in S M C 3 of 2011 presents exactly this picture. The list of owners includes the country’s who’s who. Yet, nowhere in these 2500 acres is the land being used in accordance with the terms of the lease. The CDA itself concedes that the object sought to be achieved by the agro-farm scheme has nowhere materialised.

Now, if someone were to follow the logic of the law through, the situation has serious consequences. It can forcefully be argued that by not complying with the conditions of their lease agreements, most of these 500 odd wealthy lessees have effectively forfeited their leases.

Second, since the object sought to be achieved by the agro-farm scheme has not been achieved, the city administration has no justification for continuing with the scheme. This means that 2500 acres of prime property in the heart of Islamabad should revert to the city administration which incurs a duty to re-allocate it for what the people today need the most, such as creating affordable housing.

Just imagine the range of possibilities that a simple re-zoning exercise would open up. If these 2500 acres were, for instance, to be turned into relatively high-density, high-rise, let’s say five-storey, housing communities, complete with playgrounds, schools, community spaces and the like, they could easily accommodate around 250,000 people. As a consequence, the relatively less well-off, who can today barely dream of owning a dwelling, howsoever humble, in this city, would suddenly be able to buy property within it.

The steep rise in the supply of housing can also be expected to send land prices and rentals plummeting, making the rest of the city affordable too. The construction boom would create thousands of jobs, healthy investment opportunities for investors and entrepreneurial and architectural challenges for the young and talented.

Another major beneficiary would be the city’s traffic flow. You see, at present, the city’s busiest and largest work area – Blue Area (with its thousands of shops, banks and offices) and Constitutional Avenue and its vicinity (where tens of thousands of government servants work) – is no where near any affordable housing quarters. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that what clogs the city’s roads is the traffic of workers commuting daily between these areas and their far-off residential quarters, which are mostly in Rawalpindi.

If, however, plentiful and affordable housing were to be made available in close proximity to Blue Area and Constitution Avenue, tens of thousands of commuters would simply not need to travel such long distances every day. Traffic flow would become much smoother, people would be wasting less time and money on commuting, and their lives would become much healthier.

Islamabad’s culture too would benefit. Why is it that the city’s busiest day-time areas are also its darkest and most morose areas at night? The desolate and lifeless look that large parts of Islamabad present after dusk does not do its residents much good. Bringing affordable housing close to the heart of the city would also bring much needed youthfulness and vibrancy to its culture.

One does not, of course, mean to suggest that this be done at the expense of the 500 odd lease-holders. Our constitution commands that all people, no matter how rich, are equal before the law; but it also does not allow for expropriation of property without compensation. Accordingly, the former lessees could be adequately compensated in the form of comfortable apartments in the housing complexes that crop up on their forfeited land or even monetary compensation where the law so requires.

The chief justice deserves all praise for bringing this issue out in the open. But the court can go only so far. Ultimately, it would take a major initiative on the part of the “chosen representatives of the people” to turn Islamabad around. Wresting land from the super-rich is never easy; it takes extraordinary political will, tact as well as legal acumen to bring such structural change about. Luckily, in this case, the law allows for it; and the massive social and political gains which can be expected make the effort politically worthwhile.

The fact is that what would deliver a home to the ordinary person is sure to deliver someone somewhere resounding electoral success and, what’s more, an eternal place in the hearts of the people. As elections draw nigh, the politicians of the Potohar region would do well to give this proposal a thought.

The city of the privileged can be turned into a city for all. And since this city is a microcosm of the whole of Pakistan, it could also become a perfect symbol of the turn-around that all of urban Pakistani seriously needs.

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad. Email: muhammad.hussayn.86@ gmail.com