Pakistan short of built environment professionals

KARACHI: Well-designed workplaces improve production, well-designed healthcare facilities help patients recover quickly, and well-designed public spaces promote social interaction, reduce criminal activity and push real estate value upwards.

A better built environment has the potential to improve the quality of life, give a sense of identity, and create cultural value. However, Pakistan has a deficit when it comes to such encouraging built environment.

Multiple factors are responsible for this, including outdated and poorly implemented building regulations, lack of built environment legislation, poor spatial planning, inadequate infrastructure, poor public transport, low buying power, housing and land shortages, and poor professional capacities.

This was the gist of the Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners’ recently released report “State of Architecture and Town Planning Profession in Pakistan”, which details the critical lack of capacity among built environment professions in the country.

The council organised a survey of the professions between October 2019 and January 2020 to map the situation.

The survey report was the brainchild of PCATP Chairman Architect/Planner Kalim A Siddiqui, who hopes that the key findings of the survey and recommendations would be of immense value to all who were involved in the development of the built environment in Pakistan.

“Professionals at academia, practice, officials at local and up to the highest level at provincial and federal government level will find this study most useful,” he said in a statement.

The report compared its findings of a similar survey of the built environment professions in Commonwealth member countries undertaken by the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA) in 2019-2020.

The CAA survey had revealed that Pakistan was way behind in meeting its obligations as far as its commitments and objectives for the UN Agenda 2030 for attaining Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) was concerned, especially in terms of goal#11 that seeks to make cities and human settlements, inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Lack of capacity to deliver services and thereby help in the achievement of sustainable development was perceived by the facts, such as the really low number of architects and planners in comparison to urban growth in the survey.

Data showed that the ratio of architects per thousand head of population in Pakistan was only 0.03 percent, whereas planners per thousand head of population were merely 0.007 percent.

“The average population in developed countries of Commonwealth which are member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), ie Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, is 0.455 for architects and 0.215 for town planners. However, the average of urban growth in developed OECD countries is 1.55 percent, while for Pakistan it is currently 2.7 percent,” the survey showed.

The UN Habitat predicted an increase in world’s urban population by 2.5 billion, by the year 2050. Majority of the countries that would experience this increase would be from among the developing countries including Pakistan.

The CAA report 2020, highlighted the cumulative impact of continuous high rates of urban growth, being witnessed in Pakistan whose urban population was projected to increase 207 percent by 2050.

India, Nigeria, and Pakistan fall in the list of Commonwealth countries projected to more than double their urban population by 2050.

Pakistan currently has only 6,028 registered architects, and 1,388 town planners, which indicated a shortfall of 44,238 and 90,530, respectively compared with OECD averages. Comparatively, India lags behind Pakistan in terms of registered town planners (5,000), and needs to build its capacity to 285,813 professionals in this field. It has been pointed out time and again that Pakistan suffers from a critical lack of educational capacity, and it is no different in the professions associated with the built environment as well.

The survey also pointed to a weakness in the built environment policy in terms of standards, implementation and enforcement.

“Absence of spatial policy at national, provincial, divisional, district and local tehsil level has resulted in unchecked and unregulated urban and rural sprawl which is playing havoc with lives and wellbeing of the people and their living standards,” it added. Some positive findings emerged from the study. Up to 45 percent of the respondents saw the role of PCATP in the growth of the architecture and town planning profession in the country.

About 87 percent respondents were aware of the fact that it was obligatory to have a license to practice as an architect and town planner and necessary to undergo an internship before being awarded a license.

Most respondents were also supportive of the New Urban Agenda of the government for achieving the goals of “Naya Pakistan”, and have offered their services for the same to PCATP involvement with improvement of the built environment.

The survey showed that 27 percent of the respondents were optimistic about the future of the profession in the country, and felt there has been an improvement in the role of architects and town planners as worthwhile profession to pursue.

About half felt that there had been an improvement in the profession in terms of working hours, staff working conditions and wages over the past ten years.