Bringing Back the Ghost
Adaptive Reuse of Pakistan’s Abandoned Typology
Classrooms stand empty, floors fill with rubble, and any remaining, forgotten books in the shelves gather dust. This is a widespread phenomenon in Pakistan – ghost schools; structures where students and teachers alike decided, one day, to never return. In Karachi alone, circa 2013, over 100 schools were ghost schools, with a handful on their way there given poor infrastructure and load shedding. During COVID lockdowns, this number reached higher. Students who dropped out during COVID did not necessarily return once lockdown was over. Education is a necessary right for all, and the SDG 4, Quality Education, as well as SDG 5, Gender Equality, are some of the SDGs that Pakistan has been officially working towards. These ghost schools, their causes (poor infrastructure), their current states (sites of criminal activity and squatting), and their consequences (lack of decent work and economic growth – among other SDGs), greatly affect how productive, cohesive, and healthy Pakistani society is, and can be, as a whole.
What I envision, through not only the sort of regeneration of empty, abandoned land as I exercised in the previous post, but additionally through an organically grown new system, through a network of hubs of socioeconomic and educational activity, connected via public transport routes linked to one another, is a version of Pakistan that fulfils the potentials it has, by putting these ghost schools to work – in ways perhaps a bit more diverse than originally intended than when these schools were first constructed.
What will this project do? Which pillars of sustainability will it address?
I hope to address issues of inequality and inequity regarding the social and economic pillars of sustainability; when it comes to employment and education for all (especially women and girls), opportunities for decent work, and public safety. By designing corridors of culture and economic self-resilience through a network of public transport routes and public spaces that can act as socially, culturally enriching hubs.
What is the challenge? What is currently lacking? How would the land be analyzed, and what relation would this all have to pillars of sustainability?
Pakistan’s SDG goals include:
- SDG 1 No poverty
- SDG 2 Zero hunger
- SDG 4 Quality education
- SDG 5 Gender equality
- SDG 8 Decent work and economic growth
- SDG 9 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
- SDG 15 Life on land
- SDG 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions
My proposal would work to connect urban ghost schools (schools either abandoned thoroughly, or ones that are being informally used for other, usually criminal activities), through a public transport network.
By analyzing land usage in the 20-minute radius of areas surrounding each ghost school and surveying local citizens in these areas, one begins to understand what each community needs, what it lacks, and how best the abandoned structure at hand could answer the needs of the people – without, of course, foregoing the need for schooling and education, first and foremost.
A mixed-use approach towards adaptively reusing each school would then be best advised, where education of different kinds for all ages – workshops and lectures for academic education that could set up different paths and opportunities for students, as well as more cultural, vocational education that could open up employability to students faster, according to their diverse skillsets. Other functions hosted in these structures may include, pharmacies, shopfronts for clothes and tailoring, traditional artisan crafts, utilities, plumbing, hardware stores, rentals for different products/objects, free kitchens (SDG 2), and so on.
While ensuring schooling would level the playing field for both boys and girls, as well as continuing education for men and women (where previously, if education was not in reach for girls and women, it would no longer be an option for them), fulfilling SDGs 3 and 4, it would also help create job opportunities for sellers, traders, and so on, with supply finally arriving to answer differing demands that citizens could have in the area. This would result in greater decent work and economic productivity, hitting SDGs 1 and 5.
Connecting these hubs – one could say community centers, with this host of functions – through public transport routes, allowing exchange of products, social gatherings and networking, events, collaborations, pride, and identity amongst neighborhoods, SDG 6 will also be made to improve; upgrading the infrastructure of the public system, improving the roads for safe travels, both vehicular and pedestrian, as well as installing CCTV cameras at regular intervals along the roads and in the new community centers, will all work together to answer to Pakistan’s need for an response to improved SDG 6.
Developing landscapes around the community centers with native plants will also bring biodiversity to these areas with ghost schools that tend to not have as strong a green infrastructure as more developed districts elsewhere.
As these areas with ghost schools tend to be surrounded by peri-urban and urban neighborhoods – they are not directly on the outskirts of cities, but firmly within them; this is because the cities have grown up around themselves, in insulative successions. What was never well-to-do will remain so as the city grows, arbitrary cold spots of neglect, alongside hotspots of urban development. Creating centers of inclusive, productive, culturally sensitive and nurturing urban redevelopment, and growing routes that network these centers together, should strengthen the socioeconomic impacts of the project. Environmental sustainability will also be addressed through reduced individual vehicular usage such as taxis, with that focus on public transport instead – as well as landscaping and xeriscaping, that could, apart from (re)introducing biodiversity to the area (SDG 15), also be employed in biofiltration systems for SDG 6 – Clean Water, if the needs so arose.
What is the vision of change?
Phase I. Land use and community surveys for needs.
Phase II. Adaptive reuse of each school structure and adjacent landscaping.
Phase III. Public enrichment programs through the reuse of school structures and adjacent landscaping (SDG 15), that cover academic and vocational education, and friendly competitions between neighboring communities for academic and creative output. Workshops, seminars, stage plays, and other events can also be held as part of these programs, with respective communities being involved in the setup and possible returns on investment. Free kitchens may circulate between these hubs also. (SDGs 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9.)
Phase IV. Public transport system and infrastructure improvement to help link communities together better and hopefully push positive ‘spillover’ effects. (SDGs 8, 9, 10, 11).
By the time all phases have been completed and the project is up and running, SDG 16 may be reached, because greater civilian stability and possibility for legal income can decrease the poverty-to-gang-life pipeline, and if local businesses are productive enough, gangs may actually turn to legal investments in these businesses, and profit within the margins of the law – something that has occurred in the case study of Madelin, discussed in more than one course last year. With enough incentive (although this is being hopeful), organized crime, at least in some spheres, may actually dissolve.
It’s one typology, but reworking it to society’s current needs may just provide a multi-pronged solution that brings increased justice, equity, and sustainability to various problems the nation currently faces.
