Fading Legacy of the Architectural Heritage of the Historic Core of Karachi

In 1839 British East India Company captured the town of Karachi. After an effortless resistance from the locals the fort was conquered by the British commander sir Charles Napier. The village of Kolachi then was annexed to British India and the city was labeled as Karachi. With the British occupation a phase of new sophisticated architecture and development started. Before that the city was based upon the vernacular mud architecture. These developments resulted in an influx of economic migrants who helped in making Karachi as a multinational and a multicultural city. This paper investigates the architectural attributes that the historic core of the city offers. It also discusses the side by side development of the native and British towns. The paper also researches about the existing state of the architecture precedent of the British colonial past of the city and the urban blight occurred to them over time in various forms like vandalism, encroachments, illegal repairs, etc. Keywords-architecture; Karachi; legacy; urban; development


INTRODUCTION
The city of Karachi was established in 1729 as a fortified port settlement which used to be part of the greater British Raj together with the present day countries of India and Bangladesh.Although the city is only 250 years old, there are places of pilgrimage within that go back to more than 2000 years.Most of them are still active [1].Karachi used to be a small fishing village at the time when it was occupied by the British in 1839 and with this annexation a new era of development and construction started.Karachi remained a British colony from 1839 to 1947 for 108 years.In 1843 the whole province of Sindh was captured by British and Karachi was made its capital.New business opened up with the development of its harbor for shipping.The foundations of a city municipal government were laid down and infrastructure development was undertaken.At that time, the British realized the significance of the city as a military cantonment and laid foundation of a new division.The cantonment was a mock-up of an English industrial parent-city, in other words, a basis of the 'white' town, where the local population had restricted rights of entry, where work and residential spaces were separated [2].At present day the city is divided into 6 different zones and each of the zones is divided further into towns/municipalities.Altogether there are 18 elected municipal administrations for infrastructure and spatial planning, development facilitation, and municipal services with some functions being retained by the KMC.The towns are further sub-divided into 178 localities (each town has its own number of localities).

II. INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORIC CORE OF KARACHI
Historically, the city was divided into 18 different quarters as it grew after the British annexation (demarcated by Alexander F. Bailie, the municipal engineer then).These 18 parts are now referred to as the historic core or the center of the city.Among 18 quarters, 13 are closely located and the rest are located at a distance.The boundaries of these quarters do not usually coincide with the town boundaries.Therefore, the Saddar Town and the Saddar Bazaar quarter should not be confused to be the same.These quarters contain much of the oldest parts of the city which signifies the colonial history of Karachi, in particular the Saddar Bazaar and the neighboring areas of Kharadar and Mithadar.The town is further subdivided in 11 municipal localities, including Saddar Bazaar as one of the locality.The present day historic center was developed by the British during the colonial era and housed magnificent

A. Current Status of the Colonial Architecture in Karachi
The Saddar Bazaar, which developed as the cultural hub of the city along with the rest of the quarters is now a victim of environmental degradation.The change of land and building use by laws has transformed the majority of the low rise historic structures into high rise plazas.The process of dilapidation started when the wealthier people moved out of center to the newly developed cooperative societies during the 1960s, leaving the earlier inhabited area as a transit area of the movement between the newly developed satellite towns of Korangi and Landhi and the work areas of the city [6].The colonial buildings after the Indian subcontinent partition went through a lot of transformations, in the worst cases they were demolished.The demolition process stopped due to the enlistment system for the protected heritage in 1970s.Perhaps this act helped structures to sustain but the vandalism kept on going in the form of inappropriate changes in historic significance properties.For instance, the empress market along with a few nearby structures has survived despite the additions and modifications having largely retained the function for which they were originally constructed.Eduljee-Dinshaw dispensary building a few blocks away from the empress market has undergone several changes from the adding up of minor alterations to the addition of masses to its fabric.The same happened to the Khyber hotel building, which is a magnificent corner building with impressive arcaded openings on ground floor.It had gone through several alterations such as the closing of the arcade permanently, application of ceramic tiles over stone wall and so on.

B. Urban Blight of the Heritage Properties in the Historic
Center Based upon the study of the present conservation status of the heritage buildings, an analysis of the urban decay in the historic core of the city is made which illustrates how this decay eventually threatens the city's heritage properties.Within a decade of the independence the city extended its limits as new cooperative housing societies and satellite towns for the working class refugee population were established on the fringes of the city.This deprived the historic center of its elite class population as more influential and wealthier families in the refugee colonies shifted to those colonies leaving behind the historic buildings occupied by them earlier.On the one hand, when city grew outward for residential purpose, at the same time it grew inward from the commercial point of view.The major whole sale markets located within the city center extended their limits over time.As there was no more space for their extension they eventually occupied the historic structures and converted them into godowns and storage spaces, etc. Transportation crises emerged as to cater the distant located colonies and towns to the city center.Since there was no proper transportation network, the whole movement was through Saddar.This transformed Saddar into a transit camp, congested with people, badly maintained busses and badly maintained traffic [5].the 1960 the university was moved from the Rambagh quarter to its present location.This caused a rundown of student population and academic life in Rambagh.Moreover, amendments in the building by laws and land use regulations in 1972 caused a great deal of damage to the heritage buildings as well as open spaces.Earlier the plots which were eligible for ground floor construction are now qualified to go till G+8 structures.This put a great threat to the historic structures.A large number of important heritage buildings are pulled down and replaced by new high and medium rise structures.
The changing demographic patterns have a great impact on the city.It has always been a threatening factor to the wellbeing of historic structures.Karachi being the metropolitan city and a commercial hub has to cater a large number of population.Apart from the annual rural urban migrations, the city has received three phases of the influx of refugees: Apart from this the population tends to increase every year as the average household size increases.According to a recent research on the Population Division (2014), World Urbanization Prospects: the 2014 Review by the United Nations Department of Economics and Social Affairs, the city of Karachi is considered among world's top 10 populated cities.Its population is estimated to be 24,837,881 in 2030 from 16,125,936 in 2014 [8].Constant population growth with increasing economic pressures and least economic incentives exerts pressure on the buildings in order to fulfill the requirements of the dwellers,and under the inadequate law enforcement, the situation results in the poor state of conservation of architectural heritage.In the historic center of Karachi, exists an informal renting system called pugree or the good-will system.In this system the property is leased for over 99 years with a condition of bare minimum rental amount per month.Most of the historic premises in the historic core are rented on pugree that means they are rented and owned by different persons.The owner receives almost nothing whereas on the other hand the situation is pretty fair for the tenant who has to pay very little amount.The arrangement wields a great threat to the wellbeing of the architectural heritage.As the owner gets the minimal amount, it makes him least bothered about the well-being of his property and the tenant considers it as a rented property and not his own.In the end the property suffers.

C. Repercussions of the Urban Blight in the Historic Center 1) Urban Densification
The historic center of the city is densely populated with high rise structures giving a portrait of a thick concrete jungle

Commercializ
During the pa operties has be ich puts the mmercializatio d their replacem ople prefer dem a systematic ancial capabili ldings is also a the demolish anging buildin the heritage p

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Phase 1. Refugees from Indian subcontinent partition in 1947  Phase 2. Refugees from Pakistan Bangladesh Partition in 1971 Phase 3. Refugees from Afghan Russian war in 1980.

2736 oric Core of Ka
The refugee population occupied most of the buildings abandoned by Hindus including public and religious in the native city and the open spaces in the cantonment and lines area near Sadder in a multi-class settlement structure.They included government officers, poets, artists, journalists and intellectuals.People from all walks of life made Karachi a multi-class high density metropolis with the Saddar Bazaar as a rising intellectual and entertainment center.