The Story of the Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute, and the Urban Resource Centre, Karachi, Pakistan
This book describes Karachi-based projects which have used a successful model of participatory development. It consists of three parts. Part one provides a background description, including statistics, of the various local and national contexts related to poverty, community, and environment within which the projects have been established.
Part two tells the story of OPP-RTI (Orangi Pilot Project-Research and Training Institute), its origins and culture, and the evolution of its sanitation, housing, and education programmes. It also gives a description and evaluation of the processes, communities. It also studies the impact of the OPP-RTI's work, the principles, advocacy strategies, and policy implications that have emerged from it, and assesses the views of its detractors.
Part three describes the work of the Urban Resource Centre (URC) and the method of research, advocacy, and consultation with the stakeholders in Karachi that has been used in order to promote a more equitable and just model of urban development that benefits the low-income communities which form the vast majority of the city's population.
Arif Hasan is an architect-planner in private practice in Karachi. He studied architecture at Oxford Polytechnic and in 1968, on his return of Karachi, established and Independent practice which slowly evolved into dealing with urban planning and development issues. In 1981, he was appointed Principal Consultant to the Organi Pilot Project (OPP) and, since the death of OPP's founder Akhtar Hameed Khan in 1999, he has been Chairperson of its Research and Training Institute and its advisor. He has also been Chairperson of the Urban Resource Centre (URC), Karachi, since its inception in 1989. Both the OPP and the URC have received inernational recognition and are being replicated in a number of countries.
Arif Hasan has published widely. He is a visiting professor at the Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University, Karachi, a fellow of the International Institute for Environment and Development, UK; a member of the Executive Committee of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Bangkok; and a member of the UN Advisory Group of Forced Evictions. He has received a number of national and international awards for his work.
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