5th Annual CURP Conference, Karachi

Cool Infrastructures researchers Adam Abdullah, Soha Macktoom, and Aqdas Fatima presented at the 5th Annual Conference on Urban and Regional Planning (CURP) held at the NED University of Engineering and Technology. With a paper titled “Intersections of Density, Materiality, Heat and Containment in the Post-Pandemic Urbans of the Global South,” they discussed the compounded effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Karachi’s socially and spatially marginalized urban populations. They explored how the government-imposed compulsory confinement measures of the pandemic intersected with urban heat in addition to other urban indicators, such as densities and materialities. Specifically, they examined how thermal experiences are impacted by room-level density and materiality of the housing stock, in terms of permanent, semi-permanent, and temporary materials used in its construction.

The paper underscores the need for a more nuanced, disaggregated, higher-resolution understanding of density. How can density be understood in relational terms, as multiscalar and multifaceted, when talking about informal settlements, heat and the pandemic? How do containment measures interact with density, housing materials, infrastructures, and socio-economic attributes, to produce differentiated indoor thermal experiences? These are some of the questions raised by the researchers during the presentation.