In the shadow of the M9 motorway, where Karachi’s urban sprawl begins to surrender to the dusty plains of Gadap Town, lies a landscape defined by legal silence and human noise. To the casual observer, Gulshan-e-Mehran is a “contested” void—a vast tract of land abandoned by its owners, tangled in the bureaucratic knots of land-ownership …
The Harvest of Hardship: Fueling Survival on the Fringes of Karachi Read More »
For decades, the narrow, winding alleys of low-income urban settlements were the front lines of a specific kind of civil warfare. If a pipe burst or the electricity failed, the response was predictable: local leaders—often disgruntled political activists or neighborhood heavyweights—would rally the masses. They practiced the “self-help” model or the “shout-to-be-heard” model. Development was …
The Death of the Activist, the Rise of the Vendor: The New Market Logic of the Slum Read More »
Twenty-Five Minutes on the Main Vein of Zakarya GothTo understand the Goth, one must walk the three-kilometer stretch of the main road in Haji Ghulam Zakarya Goth. It is a corridor of survival and commerce, a transit point where the urban sprawl of the M9 motorway meets the quiet resilience of a low-income settlement. Here, …
In the narrow, winding veins of Haji Ghulam Zakarya Goth, a settlement defined by its “tenacious spirit of adaptation” amidst systemic neglect, lives a woman who embodies the very definition of urban resilience. She is a mother of three, navigating a life where the infrastructure has failed, but her will has not. Her daily reality …
The Silent Architect of Zakarya Goth: One Mother’s War Against Poverty Read More »
