Urban Architecture and Local Spaces in Pakistan

Download or read book Urban Architecture and Local Spaces in Pakistan written by Suneela Ahmed and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is set in Karachi, Pakistan and investigates the possibility of achieving localness through identifying urban process and their impact on built form, addressing how locals associate with the urban spaces and how they value it. Thus, the investigation, using the local terminology maqamiat, goes beyond the physicality of space and develops a framework that helps to understand the social, ethnic, economic, ecological and other the non-physical aspects of space, which are of value to the locals. The aim is to investigate the possibility of achieving localness through identifying urban design elements that can be incorporated into the process of designing new built forms that acknowledges what is valued by the locals instead of superimposing imported designs, negating the contextual realties, both physical and social. For this purpose, the book includes three case studies from Karachi. The book questions the aspiration of many cities in the South Asian context to imitate the built forms of Western cities (increasingly, Singapore and Shanghai) which are viewed as modern and represents future. The book will make a theoretical contribution to the existing literature on postcolonial urbanism and explore space from a local vantage point for understanding how to look inwards for aspiration.