Punishing the capital

This year Islamabad has been gloriously green and verdant. One eventually even got over the monstrosity called Metro Bus – the most expensive public transport service launched with much fanfare by the government which killed 759 fully grown and decades-old trees, and 3,773 small trees.

Then a friend texted, if I’d heard that Islamabad had made it into the list of top 10 most beautiful cities in the world. My immediate reaction was that I’d always known that. For me Islamabad has always been one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It was orderly and green. I grew up here. There was Saidpur village, a couple of banyan trees, where they said Budhha may have sojourned for a while. Never mind that one of these trees has now been burnt down or chopped up by our madrassa brothers. As a child, I could count at least 30 butterfly species which had been featured in a WWF poster. I had walked in the hills, played in the streams. There were second hand book stores around the city, the British Council library, occasional movies at the Nafdec and Islamabad Club. A city of middle class government officials, the streets became quiet at 9 pm when the PTV Khabarnama started. It was just green, a city with no history, no buzz.

Growing up here, I developed a dislike of cars – those with armed forces’ number plates and Pajeros. The latter arrived on our streets, along with democracy, when we elected a National Assembly.

So last week, I googled the list of top 10 most beautiful cities, I was surprised  to find a picture, not of the Margalla Hills, but the Centaurus Mall and a tent-like Faisal mosque. We had beaten Paris, Rome, Berlin, Washington DC, Budapest, Tokyo and Moscow. I found two more ‘top 10’ lists, both excluding Islamabad. I then came across the World Cities Culture Report 2014. Islamabad was missing here too. But then how could we hope to compete with cities with museums and art galleries, cultural heritage sites, literary culture, rare and second hand book shops, films, film festivals and sports, performing arts, theatres, concerts, tourists, cultural diversity and a high percentage of public green spaces?

There are 22 cities in the report – Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, New York, Rio, Seoul, Shanghai, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires and Mumbai among others. Singapore is the greenest due to its ‘’green heritage” –a result of its ‘Garden City’ vision drawn up 50 years ago. I was happy there was no category for the capital city with the filthiest and fewest public toilets because we would have done rather well there.

Our massive infrastructure investment and projects in recent years haven’t really made much of an impression on Islamabad skyline and culture. Then one could ask, was there really any cultural scene to begin with?

So what happened to Islamabad? Simple: ill planned urbanization and CDA’s greed. Islamabad’s population has doubled over the last two decades.  Suburbs have expanded on the GT road, on one side and the Golra Mor on the other side. No water treatment plants have been set up in the last few decades and raw sewerage is being pumped in the streams. Huge slums and mosques have sprung up overnight. Hundreds of mosques are illegal encroachments – some 233 out of 492 – and one has even earned the dubious honour of decimating the children’s library by sending in women wearing abaayas. In fact, at the rate at which our mosques still continue to mushroom, there will soon be one mosque per 15 people.

So what happened to Islamabad?

Water costs 600 rupees per quarter here and considering CDA’s really sad record of repairing drinking pipelines broken around Islamabad, one wonders, would it really cost a lot to set up a few taps and sewerage in the slums? Public toilets are rare and extremely filthy. The CDA health clinics and dispensaries which provided family planning advice and mother and child care have long disappeared. Fewer schools or hospitals are being built now, only roads, mega infrastructure projects.  Before the road connecting Islamabad to Taxilla could be properly completed, this year the most inefficient and expensive metro bus project linking Islamabad and Pindi was launched. This ‘cheap’ public transport was badly needed, we’re told. It’s symptomatic of the times that the NARC land was being considered for a housing scheme which would help a politician’s adjacent lands gain in value.

CDA started working on the expansion of Islamabad Expressway a few weeks ago. This was just a Rs21.8 billion project to widen the highway from 6 lanes to 8 lanes. Six interchanges will be built. For the I-8 chowk clover, 300 trees will be cut down, and a small belt of Kachnar Park at I-8, paper mulberry, pear and other fruit trees would be affected.

The question for  CDA  and us is should we pander to the traffic, widen roads to the size of a sports stadium or divert funds to water, sanitation, health and education facilities, to museums and the arts? Why don’t we accept that fact  that long commutes are common in many large metropolises where people juggle the difficult question of living close to the city centre or outside in the suburbs and commute for 1 to 2 hours? Can we still  modify  development plans  to make sure that everyone walks to work, or catches a bus on narrow little lanes – as anyone does living in London for instance and raise taxes through parking fees and fines? I doubt that. CDA will continue to design expensive projects and squander essential resources. Many will make a quick buck from deals under the table.

On the Facebook page, the write up by CDA tells us “it is assured to all that this project is going to maintain rather increase the green character of Islamabad. More trees will be planted and the green area will be properly landscaped by the chief landscape architect and fountains will be installed in the route. International standard footpath and bus stands will be installed. Many people are also saying that there was no need of this project. As all of you know that eastern route of the China-Pakistan economic corridor will overlap the existing network near Islamabad, therefore, it was necessary to expand the existing road network of Islamabad. It is going to be an international standard signal free corridor with latest traffic control system.”

How did they quantify 'badly needed' and the future traffic load for I-8?

They posted a few computer generated  images of the proposed I-8 chowk scheme, palms planted around the new roads and claimed: “the Authority is trying its best to save the green areas as well as the trees.. Whatever trees are removed will be planted somewhere else… We have people who planted these trees and have maintained them for decades. They think of the trees as their own children and its really very difficult to cut them. Please be assured that not even a single tree will go waste”.

I called up and posted on Facebook, if an environmental impact assessment had been done, how did they quantify ‘badly needed’ and the future traffic load for I-8? So far, no response. Others on Facebook also suggested that CDA consider planting local shade giving species, kachnar, pipal, dhrek, shehtoot to offset the negative impact of this project.

There will soon be one mosque per 15 people

Am I expecting too much from CDA? Should we buy CDA’s vision for Islamabad – it’s just about big thekas! The city has a buzz – for the road thekadaar mafia, construction firms and for those who profit by the deals under the table.

But CDA doesn’t realize that trees and badly planned projects mean a lot to Islamabadis.  Even Turkish president Erdogan had to eat humble pie in Istanbul when riots started in Taksim as a reaction to plans for cutting down just a 100 trees in 2013.

Islamabad has seen a lot of dharnas last year. CDA shouldn’t give us excuses for more. This one will bring out a lot more people to the streets that just PTI jiyalas.