Pakistan, Sept. 14 -- This week, the federal government officially unveiled the Karachi Transformation Plan (KTP). At first glance, the Rs1.1 trillion initiative looks like a concerted effort to address the city's housing, municipal, and transport needs. Unfortunately, despite an attempt to build stakeholder consensus, cracks have already begun to appear in the Center-Sindh partnership at the heart of the KTP. But aside from the somewhat predictable squabbling over budget needs and appointing personnel, the plan itself is short-sighted.

While couched in the optimistic language of "transforming" Karachi, the KPT offers little in terms of a technically targeted agenda to achieve itsstated goal. Instead, rather than using the havoc created ...