Karachi is broken — and it cannot be rebuilt with mere buses and buzzwords. The Sindh government, in a recent meeting with the International Finance Corporation, once again pledged to address the city’s chronic urban challenges: water, sanitation and transport. These are not new commitments. What is missing still is an understanding of the scale of the collapse Karachi has suffered over the years.
A few transit lines, a fleet of e-buses and scattered infrastructure projects may offer temporary relief, but they do not even begin to address the depth of the crisis. With a population of over 20 million — well, according to an official count — Karachi’s problems are structural. The water system is failing, sewage overflows into homes, garbage is left to rot in open spaces and public transport remains fragmented and insufficient.
Last year, experts called Karachi “unliveable”. They were not exaggerating. The city’s decline has been decades in the making and cannot be reversed by announcing new buses or rebranding old projects. To undo the damage — caused by persistent neglect and weak governance — will take years, even decades. But that timeline cannot begin until the problem is acknowledged in full.
Karachi needs a comprehensive revival plan — one that integrates land use, drainage, housing, waste, mobility and climate resilience under a single, long-term framework. And more importantly, one that sees the city as a whole, not in silos. The city has been reduced to reacting to crises rather than planning for the future. This approach is no longer tenable.
Those at the helm of affairs must realise that Karachi is Pakistan’s economic engine. Its collapse drags the entire country down. If the authorities are serious about fixing it, they must stop announcing projects and start laying the groundwork for a city-wide recovery plan.
#Fixing #Karachi
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