The Effects of Commercialization Policy on Urban Form and Parking Facility (A Case Study of Rawalpindi)

Abstract

Urban form is one of the most important factors of cities growth. The growing population of the world is now shifting to urban centers. According to the United Nation half of the world’s population will be urbanized by 2050. Urbanism could be good or bad and is purely dependent upon policies and their implementation. Good urbanism must include the physical qualities as the socio-economic equity and balance in land use proportional with diversity and the minimum risk of environmental degradation at the same time. Unfortunately, bad urbanism suppresses the qualities of good urbanism with housing sub-division and vehicular dominant commercial centers. Cities nowadays are confronting huge changes for the sake of increasing economic development. An unhealthy policy results in the change to cities urban form with dramatic increases or decreases in land use intensity and severely disturbing the city’s urban fabric. The increasing demand of land use for commercial activity due to population growth has beaten the designated areas provided by planning authorities in Pakistan. As a result change of residential land use into other types of nonresidential activities has grown both in planned/established areas in a haphazard manner without assessment of future implications on cities urban and land form. This results in severe problems of congestion, accidents, immobility of pedestrians, pollution, environmental degradation and a vast burden on utilities. It is not only contrary to the planning principals but also against the social norms of privacy and neighborhood comfort. Like other metropolitan cities of Pakistan, Rawalpindi is immersed with the commercialization of residential land use. This research explores the implications of commercialization policy on urban form and parking demand in Rawalpindi. A case study approach has been used in this research to explore the implications of commercialization policies on the parking demand in the concerned area. For this purpose, Rawalpindi has been selected due to its proximity to the national capital. After choosing the case study, this research uses a method where both primary vi and secondary datasets have been collected and analyzed. While the primary data has been collected from the sampled commercial roads in addition to that stakeholders/residents perspective and professionals’ opinion about the commercialization policy and its implications is also captured through semi-structured interviews. It is worth clarifying that for the understanding of variations in urban form, the land use of all of the RDA and TMA controlled areas has been analyzed over time, while parking studies have been done on sampled declared commercial roads. The analysis through GIS shows that the land uses of Rawalpindi city have grown 3 times during 1995-2015 i.e. 6449 acres in 1995 to 21217 acres in 2015 along with the expansion of overall city by 27 % in total i.e. 76490 acres in 1995 to 104793 acres in 2015. When compared to the land use distribution of the city in 2015 with the National Reference Manual (NRM) standards, it has been found that all the land uses were found in range except residential and commercial which are 45% and 6.5% and are far out of the allowable range of NRM i.e. (24-32)% and (1-2)% respectively. This abnormal situation on the graph has also strengthened the argument that the city’s urban centers are high density with overburdened utilities and roads are increasingly more congested. As such a high percentage of commercial activity at the city, level stimulates environmental degradation, air pollution and the parking problem on its important roads. Similarly, a parking study has observed that none of the declared commercial roads are providing more than 50% of the required parking. The deficiency in parking is fulfilled somehow by random parking shortening the ROW of the commercial roads but also hindrances the free flow of the traffic due to less available space. Furthermore, it is evident that 38% of roads have 50-74% parking deficiency while 62% of the declared commercial roads are deficient in parking from range 75% to 100%. The study further shows that most of the conversion from residential to commercial has occurred after notification of commercialization policy (2009) which has declared more than 150 roads/segments in Rawalpindi as commercial vii roads. After full implementation, it will result in a further imbalance of land use proportions, increasing the current commercial share of the city from 6.5% to 10% plus. This will disturb the city urban form and also overburdened the cities infrastructure facilities including all utilities. Out of total 3822 properties on commercial roads, 75% have been converted to commercial activity while 25% are not converted. On the other hand out of total 2875 converted commercial properties only 3% are legally converted and the rest all commercial properties are illegal i.e. 97% of the total commercial properties. Out of total 29 declared commercial roads/segments 38% roads are (50-74) % while 62% roads are (75-100) % deficient in parking facility. Presently, the deficiency of parking on commercial roads is 79%. The future requirements as calculated, after the 100% property conversion to commercial activity, will be increased by 111% of the current parking provision. If the provision is controlled effectively the deficiency could be reduced to 38%. In the case of ineffective control in the future state to parking requirements, the deficiency will remain 79% and the number of deficient parking spaces will be increased to 15825(spaces). This creates a concern that there will be major congestion parking on commercial roads and no possibility for through traffic and safe pedestrian’s movement. There will be a situation of permanent traffic jams on the set commercial roads not only affecting the traffic flow but also disturbing the city fabric as a whole. Accordingly one of the key recommendation could be freezing of future plot conversion to declared commercial roads but it might result in litigation, therefore, it is suggested that building regulations must be stated in the commercialization letter with a specific use in the light of land use classification, reclassification and re-development rule 2009. Keeping in mind the increasing demand of commercial activity along the roads, the percentage distribution of land use should be revised to accommodate the demand of commercial activity in new housing projects with restricted plot size, penalizing big vacant plot owner, revision of parking viii standards, well defining the criteria for declaration of commercial roads, filling of vacant position in authorities for efficient building control, efficient use of commercialization fee, conversion of available vacant plots to parking lots/plazas on existing commercial roads, up gradation of utility and communal services on existing roads and strict binding on authorities for preparation the land use classification and re-classification and redevelopment plan, a tool for future development control, the absence of which is being used as an excuse.