- Planning of Islamabad and Rawalpindi: What Went Wrong?   555 kb by    Iqbal Maria, Sajida & Muhammad, Imran | sajida_iqbal_maria@hotmail.com    Short Outline The focus of the paper is identifying the weakness of institutional arrangement for both cities and suggests some direction for improvement to facilitate private housing development. Abstract Islamabad is one of the examples of modern urban planning undertaken shortly after the formation of the new state of Pakistan to serve as its capital city. The Master Plan for Islamabad was prepared in 1960 by considering Islamabad as a part of a large metropolitan area by integrating the city of Rawalpindi as a twin city. These two cities were considered highly dependent to each other in overall urban development. However, the original Master Plan covering the city of Rawalpindi was not put into practice. In fact, different planning and institutional arrangement was set up to develop urban areas in twin cities. This disintegration caused lot of problem among them urban transport and housing are the most notable one. In early 1990s, the economic growth of twin cities accelerated due to development of private housing schemes. However, physically integrated but institutionally disintegrated cities could not match the pace of rapid urban development. In fact, disintegrated provisions generated several barriers for private housing schemes. The case of Bahria Town, a largest private housing scheme, is one of the examples which lies both in the area of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The purpose of this paper is to identify different kind of disintegrated areas responsible to create barriers for rapid private housing development in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The focus of the paper is identifying the weakness of institutional arrangement for both cities and suggests some direction for improvement to facilitate private housing development. The paper will starts with a general discussion of initial institutional arrangement conceived by the First Master Plan for Islamabad and Rawalpindi and how it developed after forty-five years. Than, the research will identify institutional and planning barriers responsible for making hurdles for private housing development. The Bahria Town will be presented as a case study to validate these barriers. Finally, some policy implications would be suggested to improve institutional arrangements for facilitating private housing development. This research contributes to explore institutional aspect required to meet new challenge of planning in twenty first century. This will help to work out why current institutional arrangement fails to address private investment in housing development. The research will make a significant contribution to the institutional planning according the emerging demand from the private sectors. Keywords Institutions, Private Housing Development, Islamabad Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2006: Cities between Integration and Disintegration   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper