Rainwater Rethink
At a recent discussion hosted by the Urban Resource Centre in Karachi, architects and town planners examined the city’s devastating monsoon flooding. A clear consensus emerged on what the rest of the country has been warning about for years: Pakistan’s cities suffer from a chronic lack of urban planning, especially when it comes to managing rainwater and natural drainage flows. The accelerating effects of climate change are now exposing these flaws in catastrophic fashion, and the pattern is the same across the country.
Roads and infrastructure are built wherever land is available, with little consideration for how rainwater will be channelled. Profit-driven development routinely ignores proper drainage systems, while cheap land lying in natural waterways is snapped up for projects that can be sold at huge mark-ups. This leads to blocked drainage channels and pockets where rainwater pools with no outlet to nearby drains or natural waterways—many of which are themselves sealed off by poor planning and construction without proper infrastructure.
As Pakistan assesses the damage and grapples with the aftermath of repeated flooding, the next steps should be obvious. Construction on natural waterways and drainage channels must be halted and reversed where possible, and those responsible for such projects held accountable.
At the same time, there must be a nationwide review of urban water drainage systems to ensure rainwater can flow into rivers and natural channels and that these routes are properly maintained. Without such measures, Pakistan will face the same disastrous flooding again and again as monsoon rains grow more intense each year.
Published in Nation September, 18, 2025