Take the Tram to Tower

& the Ferry to the French Beach

Hop along these fictitious Karachi South Public Transit Maps as they take you to a 100 stops on seven tram lines, and open up Karachi for pleasure & joy.

Karachi is fiercely functional, to the point of no joy. The little joy that does exist, is either forbidden, illegal or impossible to access unless you’re rich.

There are only a handful of large parks across the city: Ibn-e-Qasim, Hill Park, Safari Park, Aziz Bhatti Park, Mazar-e-Quaid, Gandhi Garden, Burns Garden & the new Kidney Hill Park. Access to the oil-slick, grey-sand city beach, in Clifton, is increasingly restricted. Manora is accessible through a precarious, unscheduled boat service from the Keamari Jetty. Despite being a city by the sea, it takes a few hours of wrestling with container trucks through a dystopian landscape, complete with craters, to access slightly cleaner beaches, away from the port, at Sandspit, Hawkes’ Bay & onwards. There are no boat trips or tours available for the public.

The heart of the problem is the total absence of good quality public transit. Karachi is the only city of its scale in the world, with around 20 million inhabitants, that does not provide a public transit system to its residents. That makes commuting anywhere — for work or pleasure — a painful, expensive experience.

Changing Landscape

Some of this is about to change. Green Line, the city’s first bus-based rapid transit corridor, is expected to open later this year. Funding, to the tune of $1 billion, has been approved for the Red and Yellow lines by the Asian Development Bank & the World Bank. They should be ready by 2025.

Some things are not going to change. Karachi Circular Railway revival remains a fever dream. The Kemari to Manora boat service has stayed the same for over a century now. Mauripur road will never not be cratered.

The change (and lack thereof) is largely dictated by, and defined in, the Karachi Transport Improvement Plan 2030, a multi-year study and proposal conducted between 2009–2012 by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

A foundational document, the KTIP 2030 proposes rail and bus corridors that will help people get from homes to work and back quickly and cheaply. The plan is thorough, based on years of on-ground studies, but lacks empathy and context. There are two glaring omissions: access to recreation, and access to, and within, district South. This overlap of omissions is not accidental.

South is the best, but not for long

Karachi’s south is the city’s kernel and origin point. Site of the country’s largest seaport, financial & media institutions and scores of wholesale and retail markets, it is the city’s beating heart. It also hosts the highest density of parks, historical sites, and venues for dinning, shopping, recreation and entertainment. It is a culturally, socially, historically, and demographically rich and dense district. Most importantly, it hosts the city’s largest public attraction: the Clifton beach.

Over the years though, the district has experienced multiple, sometimes opposing, forces of change. Some parts are densifying and gentrifying (e.g. Frere Town & Civil Lines) while others are densifying and getting even more dilapidated (e.g. Kharadar or Delhi Colony). In both cases, and in the absence of public transit, the district is increasingly congested, stifling and facing imminent decay.

Future as Fiction

Design Fiction is a practice that is used to imagine, explore and critique possible futures using artefacts and prototypes. I took inspiration for these fictitious maps, from a CGI video of a proposed tram from Metropole to Tower posted on Twitter by Karachi’s eclectic former Commissioner (and absurdist signboard and plastic flower enthusiast) Iftikhar Shallwani. Unlike his proposed tram, which harks back to an uncritically imagined, ‘glorious’ past, my design fiction practice hopes to explore and critique mobility in present-day, and near-future, Karachi.

The result is a set of fictitious twin maps of a robust tram and ferry network in the south of Karachi, without which, it might be impossible to imagine a better quality of life for the district, and the city’s, residents. They can also be read as a map of the city’s natural, historic, social and cultural heritage that is concentrated in the south, and should be accessible to all citizens.

One map, in portrait, is geographically (sort of) accurate. It is drawn to scale and orientation of the roads on which the proposed tram should run. Major parks are also drawn to scale. The coastline, however, is abstracted.

The other map, in landscape, is schematic, and drawn in the style of global metro and transit maps. Geography is simplified (and skewed) to make the map more legible, and easy to follow.

The Karachi South Public Transit Maps propose seven tram lines that connect 100 unique stations in the district, including three that would serve as ferry stations as well. This network is also connected to the major proposed corridors from KTIP 2030, including the Karachi Circular Railway and the Green & Yellow BRT Lines. This helps residents from all over the city connect to sites for play and recreation in the south. The proposed ferry network makes far-flung beaches along the coast more accessible from city centres at Keamari, Boat Basin & Clifton. Here is a Karachi where recreation and joy is more accessible to all its citizens.

These maps are fictitious design objects. They are meant to spark imagination, or despondency, and facilitate conversations, or arguments, around mobility, accessibility, recreation, nostalgia and future. You can stare at the lines and stations and engage in a reverie, or despair. But, hopefully, you will never think of Karachi the same.

Follow karachi_atlas on Instagram for more photos, stories and content on these and other maps.

Prints Available

Limited prints of the maps are available for acquisition. They are printed on 210g coated paper & measure 12.6 x 17.7 inches. There are only 120 prints of each version (geographic and schematic) available. Each print is numbered, and will be shipped in a reinforced envelope. Framing is not included.

For pricing and requests, click here. You will receive a confirmation email with digital payment details after that.

Place your requests before March 14, 2021. Orders will be processed on a first-come, first-served basis until prints last. Shipping starts March 22, 2021 onwards.