Seize Instant City: Life And Death In Karachi Generated By Steve Inskeep EBook

study of Karachi suffers a little from multiple personality disorder, but all of those personalities to extend the analogy are pretty charming and interesting.
He has a couple of competing narratives here at times, the book wants to be a study of the rise of the myriad of "instant cities" that have grown up since the end of World War II, and Innskeep argues that these cities offer opportunities to help us better understand the challenges and opportunities ofst century life, particularly in the ways in which diverse religious and ethnic populations are forced to interact with each other in Karachi, this is, oftentimes, not successful he also has a more muted, but equally useful thesis that lack of capacity leads to disorder, chaos, and corruption.
At other times, the book reads like a "whodunit," investigating the events and causes of the Ashura attacks of December,, in whichwere killed and hundreds wounded in an initial bombing of a Shia religious procession, and dozens more were killed and millions of dollars lost in a series of fires set immediately afterwards in the Bolton Market area of downtown Karachi.
Innskeep also flirts with recounting the history of Pakistan and Karachi, and he centers each chapter around personal stories of Karachi residents.
He integrates all of these different narratives pretty successfully, and in the end, weaves a rich narrative of life and death in dense and difficult city of Karachi.
Those interested in Pakistani history, religious strife, urban planning, or instant cities will likely find this a rewarding read.
Steve Inskeep tackles the political and social issues surrounding Karachi well, His meticluous research provides a unique perspective of all the rival interests in Karachi, The gangleaders and politicians which aren't always distinguishable, As well as the people whose optimistic view for Karachi has been admirable, Definitely a worthy read. Accessible and interesting book with a focus on the development of Karachi, This has some similar themes to Arrival City by Doug Saunders Brilliant, absolutely brilliant book on Karachi, Steve has managed to capture the spirit of Karachi in a small book which reads like a documentary.
The book is filled with interesting characters with their life summaries and the impact they are making in the instant city of Karachi.


So why has Karachi failed while other instant cities like Hong Kong and Shanghai thrived The reason is well explained by the following quote.
.

We are not a poor country, we're a poorly managed country,

And the main reason for poor management seems to grasped by the founding father Jinnah sahib with his reply to a Muslim military officer who expressed for quick promotion upon joining the Pakistan army just before the great Partition, The old man made a face 'You musalmans, either you are up in the sky or down in the dumps.
You cannot adopt a steady course, All promotions will come in good time, but there will be no mad rush',

Unfortunately, most Pakistanis conveniently choose to ignore his advice and opted for the shortcut approach which has resulted in a string of avoidable failures.
Like the failure to clean sewers, pick up garbage, look after neighbours, to respect the greater good, to govern, in short, the failure to find workable solutions to chronic problems.



I would highly recommend this book to every Pakistani, . . This book didnt hold my attention as much as I hoped it would, but I enjoyed learning about Karachi.
Easy to read about a surprising city, Brilliant, sympathetic story of Karachi, Pakistans biggest city, Humane, historical and amazingly unfettered by the authors personal views, Ive spent time in Karachi and despite its dysfunction find it immensely attractive, Inskeep manages to convey that weird brilliance as well,
Only criticism is the typically American attempt to wrap up the book with some managerial recommendations at the end.

Highly recommended.
Fascinating read about the changes in the biggest metropolis of Pakistan, Very insightful book on the history and the ins/outs of a megacity called Karachi, which I've visited several times over the years.
Estimates by the UN show the

population of Karachi changing from approximatelymillion intomillion inand then to.
million in. As pointed out in the conclusion by Inskeep, Karachi is still in dire need of "more law and order.
" As he found in his research, probably "more than half the city lives in unauthorized housing, " The city has been deluged over the years by refugees, immigrants many from India following Partition in, and IDPs Internally Displaced Peoplesdue to economic opportunities, education, or as the result of widespread flooding of the Indus River amp destruction.
From the host of NPR's Morning Edition, a deeply reported portrait of Karachi, Pakistan, a city that illuminates the perils and possibilities of rapidly growing metropolises all around the world.
In recent decades, the world has seen an unprecedented shift of people from the countryside into cities.
As Steve Inskeep so aptly puts it, we are now living in the age of the "instant city," when new megacities can emerge practically overnight, creating a host of unique pressures surrounding land use, energy, housing, and the environment.
In his first book, the cohost of Morning Edition explores how this epic migration has transformed one of the world's most intriguing instant cities: Karachi, Pakistan.


Karachi has exploded from a colonial port town of,into a sprawling metropolis of at leastmillion today.
As the booming commercial center of Pakistan, Karachi is perhaps the largest city whose stability is a vital security concern of the United States, and yet it is a place that Americans have frequently misunderstood.


As Inskeep underscores, one of the great ironies of Karachi's history is that the decision to divide Pakistan and India along religious lines inonly unleashed deeper divisions within the cityover religious sect, ethnic group, and political party.
In Instant City, Inskeep investigates thebombing of a Shia religious procession that killed dozens of people and led to further acts of terrorism, including widespread arson at a popular market.
As he discovers, the bombing is in many ways a microcosm of the numerous conflicts that divide Karachi, because people wondered if the perpetrators were motivated by religious fervor, political revenge, or simply a desire to make way for new real estate in the heart of the city.
Despite the violence that frequently consumes Karachi, Inskeep finds remarkable signs of the city's tolerance, vitality, and thriving civil societyfrom a worldrenowned ambulance service to a socially innovative project that helps residents of the vast squatter neighborhoods find their own solutions to sanitation, health care, and education.


Drawing on interviews with a broad cross section of Karachi residents, from ER doctors to architects to shopkeepers, Inskeep has created a vibrant and nuanced portrait of the forces competing to shape the future of one of the world's fastest growing cities.
Over the summer while I was pretending to be an adult teaching in Boston, I would often turn on Morning Edition while puttering around my apartment in the hope that hearing about the catastrophic collapse of our financial system would have the same effect as drinking a few cups of coffee Starbucks is expensive terror is free.
After this became an essential part of my admittedly geriatric morning routine, I started to grow attached to the disembodied voices serenading my frantic lastminute lesson planning.
Inevitably this lead to disappointment whenever NPRs morning news dream team was broken up while Steve Inskeep was away reporting in Pakistan, disappointment which I invariably took out on my students kidding, former employers! Kidding!

The reason behind his absences and the only permissible excuse for the otherwise cardinal sin of ditching Renee Montagne is that he was researching his first book, the engaginglywritten and impressivelyresearched Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, which explores the complex story of a city whose population has skyrocketed frommillion people into overmillion today.
For a comparison, New Yorks population has risen frommillion residents tomillion within roughly that same period, a far more gradual and less dramatic increase.


Inskeeps portrait of this rapidly expanding sprawling metropolis spirals outward from an account of the tragic December,bombing of a religious procession on Jinnah Road, in which each character the reader encounters sparks a host of complicated revelations and questions about the way a multitude of temperaments, religions, ethnicities, and interests interact in Karachi.
Inskeep is at his best when developing these characters, whose accounts are as illuminating as they are engrossing.
A personal favorite is the story of Dr, Seemin Jamali, the intrepid emergency room doctor who suffers a head injury during a retaliatory blast and yet returns to work the very next day to treat patients another is Abdul Sattar Edhi, the wry old man who establishes an extragovernmental ambulance service out of a fleet of old vans in the heart of the city, not to mention his unimpressed wife “Youll never amount to anything!” she laments at one point, despite this major accomplishment.
“You put your hands in your pockets and thread comes out!”

Behind these colorful portraits lies a larger story about the power dynamics that govern Karachi.
This is a city where ethnic and religious divides are mobilized to the point of violence by strictly sectarian political parties to the extent that even the contract establishing the citys local government itself was allowed to completely expire out of fear of overstepping the wrong boundaries.
In such an unstable environment, any sort of change requires walking a thin tightropeand some of Karachis most remarkable residents do exactly that.
Sometimes they are successful, like in the case of the aforementioned ambulance service run by Edhi, who proudly tells Inskeep he has never filled out a government form in his life and yet provides emergency medical services to practically every corner of the city.


Others tell a more disheartening tale, In thes, at the request of the government of Ayub Khan, Athenian city planner Constantinos Doxiadis sought to alleviate the severe overcrowding in Karachis center by creating a neat, wellplanned suburb of affordable housing.
The plan quickly backfiredthe poorest residents for whom the development was intended could not afford the taxes on the homes, nor the cost of commuting to their jobsand the area quickly become a slum itself, with Doxiades neat little homes crowded out by makeshift shelters.
More than fifty years later, many of the same challenges remainInskeep relates the story of one husbandandwife development team he meets seeking to create a new lowincome housing neighborhood, only to find when they drive out to their development site that the land has already begun to be parceled up and resold by illicit land mafias.
Such “land mafias” are a symptom of one of the most pressing problems facing this instant city: too many people are competing for too little space, and there is too little government not to mention too much corruption to mediate these competing forces.
Nevertheless, citizens likethe husbandandwife developers persevere, and their resilience in the face of such difficult circumstances are what makes Karachi, in part, such a compelling subject.


Instant City is a fascinating read about a quintessentially twentyfirst century metropolisI highly recommended it, review originally posted sitelinkhere, As a Karachi native, I consider myself forever connected to that tangle of a metropolis even though I moved to Chicago at a year old and have lived here ever since.
It is a notoriously tumultuous city, a microcosm of mismanagement, violence and instability, Despite my deep personal interest in Karachi, its history and current state are difficult to unravel and daily changes impossible to follow.
Having read Steve Inskeeps “Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi,” I cannot recommend it highly enough,

sitelinkRead more. If you want to know about Karachi and the people who have worked with dedication for the progress of this city then this is the best book to read.
Insightful and thoughtprovoking! ALAS! What a beautiful city it was, .