Karachi is Pakistan's only port and its main commercial and industrial city. Once it has also been the federal capital.

Since the country's independence in 1947, Karachi's population increased, mainly through migration, from 450,000 then to 10 million in 1998. It has changed the ethnic composition not only of the city but also of the Sindh province where it is located, creating social, economic and political stress.

Over the years, various ambitious plans were prepared for the city but could not be implemented for a variety of political, technical and institutional reasons. As a result, much of Karachi's employment, housing and physical and social infrastructure needs could not be met. This demand-supply gap is increasingly met by informal service providers, whom the citizens of Karachi refer to as 'mafias'.

These 'mafias' operate through a powerful nexus with bureaucrats and politicians, which further weakens the formal state institutions or, indeed, makes them redundant. Because of these factors, powerful lobbies of contractors and consultants, both local and foreign, are able to promote inappropriate but profit-making plans for the city and use foreign loans; developers are able to acquire land by manipulating illegal evictions and burnings of low-income settlements; land-use and traffic regulations can be violated with impunity; master plans remain unimplemented, and law enforcing agencies fail to provide protection to citizens from crime, violence and extortion.

In Understanding Karachi, Arif Hasan, a renowned Karachi architect, researcher and development activist, gives the background of Karachi's present situation and describes the actors and factors  and their relationship to each other  that are determining the direction and nature of Karachi's development and hence shaping its social and physical environment. He also proposes practical solutions to the city's problems based on the work of selfless CBOs, NGOs, professionals and concerned citizens who are struggling  with increasing success  for the creation of a new and better system of governance.