About Islamabad

It's likely that if you've ever gone to Islamabad, you've been to the renowned Jinnah Super Market. It is a lush green. Beautiful. plenty of stores selling both national and international brands. There is so much life there that you most likely did not have an opportunity to look south. This is what. You can easily detect what appears to be an error within the wonderful splendour of Islamabad's most exquisite location if you stand over the side of Bhittai Road and stare South-West of the Jinnah Super Market. One of the many slums in the city, France Colony, glares back at you. It is filthy, untidy, and poor—everything that Islamabad is not.

The city's paradoxical nature is not a coincidence. Islamabad's housing crisis is a challenge that needs urgent and prompt policy action. Pakistan's capital was conceived as a planned community. The city, which is divided into five main zones, was originally intended to be a tiny town for government and public service workers. Sectors within Zone-1 are denoted by alphabets (e.g., E, F, G, H, I). Each sector has a Markaz, the sector marketplace, and is further divided into 4 sub-sectors. Over the past 15 years, the cost of land has risen in this area. Rarely is living in this area of Islamabad cheap for people moving there.

With a few notable exceptions, city centre inhabitants enjoy excellent standards of living and frequently employ domestic helpers for tasks like cleaning, cooking, driving, gardening, and child care. The section of society that provides these services does not have room in the city's planned area. It appears that the city's master plan for Islamabad made the assumption that Rawalpindi would supply the city’s workforce. This assumption was doomed to fail because there was no workable public transportation connection connecting the twin cities.