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Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 186 ratings · 46 reviews

From the host of NPR's Morning Edition, a deeply reported portrait of Karachi, Pakistan, a city that illuminates the perils and possibilities of rapidly growing metropolises all around the world.

In recent decades, the world has seen an unprecedented shift of people from the countryside into cities. As Steve Inskeep so aptly puts it, we are now living in the age of the "in...more From the host of NPR's Morning Edition, a deeply reported portrait of Karachi, Pakistan, a city that illuminates the perils and possibilities of rapidly growing metropolises all around the world.

In recent decades, the world has seen an unprecedented shift of people from the countryside into cities. As Steve Inskeep so aptly puts it, we are now living in the age of the "instant city," when new megacities can emerge practically overnight, creating a host of unique pressures surrounding land use, energy, housing, and the environment. In his first book, the co-host of Morning Edition explores how this epic migration has transformed one of the world's most intriguing instant cities: Karachi, Pakistan.

Karachi has exploded from a colonial port town of 350,000 in 1941 to a sprawling metropolis of at least 13 million today. As the booming commercial center of Pakistan, Karachi is perhaps the largest city whose stability is a vital security concern of the United States, and yet it is a place that Americans have frequently misunderstood.

As Inskeep underscores, one of the great ironies of Karachi's history is that the decision to divide Pakistan and India along religious lines in 1947 only unleashed deeper divisions within the city-over religious sect, ethnic group, and political party. In Instant City, Inskeep investigates the 2009 bombing of a Shia religious procession that killed dozens of people and led to further acts of terrorism, including widespread arson at a popular market. As he discovers, the bombing is in many ways a microcosm of the numerous conflicts that divide Karachi, because people wondered if the perpetrators were motivated by religious fervor, political revenge, or simply a desire to make way for new real estate in the heart of the city. Despite the violence that frequently consumes Karachi, Inskeep finds remarkable signs of the city's tolerance, vitality, and thriving civil society-from a world-renowned ambulance service to a socially innovative project that helps residents of the vast squatter neighborhoods find their own solutions to sanitation, health care, and education.

Drawing on interviews with a broad cross section of Karachi residents, from ER doctors to architects to shopkeepers, Inskeep has created a vibrant and nuanced portrait of the forces competing to shape the future of one of the world's fastest growing cities.(less)

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published October 13th 2011 by Penguin Press HC, The

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Jan 30, 2013 Ryan G rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: no-longer-own

I like to think I'm pretty smart and that I have a decent grasp on world history and current geopolitical events that are shaping the world we live in. Then I see or read something that makes me realize I really don't have a frickin clue. These are the moments that I both live for and dread. I love them because they help me remember that I will never stop learning, that there is so much out there for me to discover that I'll never get bored. On the other hand, it's almost too much to comprehend....more I like to think I'm pretty smart and that I have a decent grasp on world history and current geopolitical events that are shaping the world we live in. Then I see or read something that makes me realize I really don't have a frickin clue. These are the moments that I both live for and dread. I love them because they help me remember that I will never stop learning, that there is so much out there for me to discover that I'll never get bored. On the other hand, it's almost too much to comprehend. There are times I feel I should be concentrating on one subject for the rest of my life, if I don't, I'll never know what I need to. Reading Instant City was one such moment.

When I decided I wanted to read/review this book, I wasn't thinking too deeply about it. There were really only two reasons I wanted to do so. I'm a fan of Steve Inskeep, I listen to NPR all the time, and I want to know more about Pakistan, a country I don't know all that much about. That, and this sounds really superficial, but every time I think of Karachi, I think of the last segment of one of my favorite movies. At the end of Auntie Mame, as she is telling Patrick's son about the sites and sounds he is going to see on their trip, Karachi is one of the place she is telling him about. Silly reason to read a book, but I'm glad I did.

What I enjoyed the most about this read, even though it made me feel a little dumb at times, was finally being able to understand a little of the history of the region and why India and Pakistan are always at each other's throats. I know I heard of the partition before, but I never thought about it and the ramifications of splitting apart such a large country into smaller ones. The concept of it being done along religious lines, gave me a better understanding of the history and and current troubles in the region.

Karachi serves as a perfect petri dish for studying the very modern phenomenon of an Instant City. When you have mass migration from rural to urban settings, whatever the reasons, it's bound to cause problems that nobody really thought through or prepared for. Buy investigating Karachi, even by narrowing down to one bloody day in December of 2009, Steve Inskeep is able to look at the subject from all angles.(less)

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Nov 08, 2012 Fatima Afridi rated it 5 of 5 stars

I approached this book with skepticism just like the woman (from Karachi) who approaches Steve Inskeep at the Doha airport in the epilogue of the book. Not even for a moment did it feel like a foreigner had written this account of my home city. I wouldn't call it unbiased, it was striking that Steve actually sounded sympathetic and even affectionate (as the end approaches) to Karachi and it's resilient citizens. It was heartening to read such a love-filled account of Karachi. It also felt like I...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a lucid portrayal of a city that has expanded enormously and beyond recognition since 1945. There are not many cities of over 10 million inhabitants where one can state that. Even Tokyo, which was fire-bombed during World War II, still had a much larger population than Karachi in 1945.

Mr. Inskeep examines some of the current events in Karachi such as the bombing and subsequent riots of December 28/2009. But he also delves into the past and the complex history of Pakistan which has underg...more

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Jun 10, 2012 Ishmael Seaward rated it 3 of 5 stars

Towards the end of the book, there is this memorable statement from a psychiatrist: "...massive numbers of people in Karachi were suffering from post-traumatic stress, or PTS, the kind of mental anguish popularly associated with survivors from a war... Many people responded to Karachi's trouble by living in a lower gear, limiting the ambitions and moving about like the living dead. They'd lost hope."

In 2010, the law that established governance of the city expired, leaving the city with no mayor...more

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May 04, 2012 Abram Conrad rated it 3 of 5 stars

'Instant City' reads as a case study of a case study of a larger worldwide occurrance. Looking at the bombing of a religious procession in late 2009, and using it to highlight the issues with instant cities in the 21st century (ethnic mixing, lack of city planning, lack of clear governance, poverty), Inskeep also looks at Karachi as an emblem of the trend of the late 20th and early 21st century. The growth of instant cities - cities whose growth has dramatically outstripped the growth of their m...more

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Dec 17, 2011 Hadrian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, society-and-culture, south-asia-ind-pak, history

KARACHI is a new type of city - rising from obscurity as a 19th century village under the English Raj, to a major colonial outpost, to the capital of one of the world's most populous nations, having swollen to 30 times its 1940s population by 2010.

This journalistic snapshot of Karachi not only provides a portrait of the life and history of this unique city, but also some theories about other developing cities - Urumqi, Manila, Dhaka, Mexico City, Lagos, and so forth.

Karachi, and other such citie...more

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Jan 07, 2012 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: school

Innskeep's study of Karachi suffers a little from multiple personality disorder, but all of those personalities (to extend the analogy) are pretty charming and interesting. He has a couple of competing narratives here - at times, the book wants to be a study of the rise of the myriad of "instant cities" that have grown up since the end of World War II, and Innskeep argues that these cities offer opportunities to help us better understand the challenges and opportunities of 21st century life, par...more

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Dec 04, 2011 Carly Thompson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, contemporary-issues, nonfiction, south-east-asia

Fascinating book about current Karachi, Pakistan and the forces that shaped it into the city it is today. I especially like Inskeep's discussion of instant cities--cities that rapidly increase their size. In the case of Karachi, the rapid increase in population absent zoning regulations and a corresponding increase in sewage and electrical facilities has made city life horrible for many the poor migrants. I really enjoy reading about the development of cities and urban policy and found this book...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Amanda M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Over the summer while I was ~~pretending to be an adult~~ teaching in Boston, I would often turn on Morning Edition while puttering around my apartment in the hope that hearing about the catastrophic collapse of our financial system would have the same effect as drinking a few cups of coffee (Starbucks is expensive; terror is free.) After this became an essential part of my admittedly geriatric morning routine, I started to grow attached to the disembodied voices serenading my frantic last-minute le...more Over the summer while I was ~~pretending to be an adult~~ teaching in Boston, I would often turn on Morning Edition while puttering around my apartment in the hope that hearing about the catastrophic collapse of our financial system would have the same effect as drinking a few cups of coffee (Starbucks is expensive; terror is free.) After this became an essential part of my admittedly geriatric morning routine, I started to grow attached to the disembodied voices serenading my frantic last-minute lesson planning. Inevitably this lead to disappointment whenever NPR’s morning news dream team was broken up while Steve Inskeep was away reporting in Pakistan, disappointment which I invariably took out on my students (kidding, former employers! Kidding!)

The reason behind his absences (and the only permissible excuse for the otherwise cardinal sin of ditching Renee Montagne) is that he was researching his first book, the engagingly-written and impressively-researched Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi, which explores the complex story of a city whose population has skyrocketed from 1 million people in 1950 to over 13 million today. (For a comparison, New York’s population has risen from 11 million residents to 19 million within roughly that same period, a far more gradual and less dramatic increase.)

Inskeep’s portrait of this rapidly expanding sprawling metropolis spirals outward from an account of the tragic December 28, 2009 bombing of a religious procession on Jinnah Road, in which each character the reader encounters sparks a host of complicated revelations and questions about the way a multitude of temperaments, religions, ethnicities, and interests interact in Karachi. Inskeep is at his best when developing these characters, whose accounts are as illuminating as they are engrossing. A personal favorite is the story of Dr. Seemin Jamali, the intrepid emergency room doctor who suffers a head injury during a retaliatory blast and yet returns to work the very next day to treat patients; another is Abdul Sattar Edhi, the wry old man who establishes an extra-governmental ambulance service out of a fleet of old vans in the heart of the city, not to mention his unimpressed wife (“You’ll never amount to anything!” she laments at one point, despite this major accomplishment. “You put your hands in your pockets and thread comes out!”)

Behind these colorful portraits lies a larger story about the power dynamics that govern Karachi. This is a city where ethnic and religious divides are mobilized to the point of violence by strictly sectarian political parties to the extent that even the contract establishing the city’s local government itself was allowed to completely expire out of fear of overstepping the wrong boundaries. In such an unstable environment, any sort of change requires walking a thin tightrope—and some of Karachi’s most remarkable residents do exactly that. Sometimes they are successful, like in the case of the aforementioned ambulance service run by Edhi, who proudly tells Inskeep he has never filled out a government form in his life and yet provides emergency medical services to practically every corner of the city.

Others tell a more disheartening tale. In the 1960s, at the request of the government of Ayub Khan, Athenian city planner Constantinos Doxiadis sought to alleviate the severe overcrowding in Karachi’s center by creating a neat, well-planned suburb of affordable housing. The plan quickly backfired—the poorest residents for whom the development was intended could not afford the taxes on the homes, nor the cost of commuting to their jobs—and the area quickly become a slum itself, with Doxiades’ neat little homes crowded out by makeshift shelters. More than fifty years later, many of the same challenges remain—Inskeep relates the story of one husband-and-wife development team he meets seeking to create a new low-income housing neighborhood, only to find when they drive out to their development site that the land has already begun to be parceled up and resold by illicit land mafias. Such “land mafias” are a symptom of one of the most pressing problems facing this instant city: too many people are competing for too little space, and there is too little government (not to mention too much corruption) to mediate these competing forces. Nevertheless, citizens likethe husband-and-wife developers persevere, and their resilience in the face of such difficult circumstances are what makes Karachi, in part, such a compelling subject.

Instant City is a fascinating read about a quintessentially twenty-first century metropolis—I highly recommended it. (review originally posted here.) (less)

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Jan 15, 2012 Aurina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fairly quick read for a work of non-fiction, Instant City is a well-researched and overall interesting book. As someone fairly well-versed with the history and socio-politics of Pakistan, I didn't find it particularly eye-opening, but it was still interesting enough that I finished reading it in 2 days. Inskeep writes with affection and without judgement. Most hearteningly, he explores the history of the city without obsessing over Islamic extremism, while still acknowledging the heartbreaking v...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Rich rated it 3 of 5 stars

Steve Inskeep's Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi was a fascinating weaving narrative. As a matter of writing, Mr. Inskeep is a better NPR reporter than he is an author. His effort here is not tiresome but the repetition begins to try the patience of a reader at times (especially in the beginning of Instant City).

Beyond the modicum of difficulties with his writing, Inskeep's effort is quite adequate at constantly drawing the reader further into the story of Karachi. Instant City's judgment...more

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Jan 24, 2013 notabattlechick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I expected to like this book more than I did, but it was still worth reading. Inskeep does provide an insightful look into the history of the city of Karachi - which takes him down paths to explore decolonization, India-Pakistan, ethnic violence, religious violence, urbanization, poverty, development, gender, terrorism, and other pertinent subjects. Even so, the pacing of the first half of the book left something to be desired, so it felt like it was taking forever to move through the text. Fina...more

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Dec 07, 2011 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended. Great insight into the complexities and intrigues of one of the world's largest cities. The author gives us his definition of an instant city, lists several of them, past and present, then gives many of the individual stories that make up Karachi. The author chose a single event, an attack on a Shia parade two years ago, and explains how that event is linked with so many other facets of modern Karachi. He makes some keen observations on discrimination and how that determines so much...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Amina rated it 5 of 5 stars

As a Karachi native, I consider myself forever connected to that tangle of a metropolis even though I moved to Chicago at a year old and have lived here ever since. It is a notoriously tumultuous city, a microcosm of mismanagement, violence and instability. Despite my deep personal interest in Karachi, its history and current state are difficult to unravel and daily changes impossible to follow. Having read Steve Inskeep’s “Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi,” I cannot recommend it highly e...more

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May 13, 2012 Raza Syed rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's a interesting book full of interesting facts about Karachi and some keen observations by Inskeep. Unfortunately at times it's all over the place, there are too many directions this book keeps on going in (like a stumbling drinks - 2 steps forward 1 step backwards). Maybe its done on purpose as that's What Karachi in its brief history has acted like.
It's not a bad book but I wished it explained things more then just touching topics and moving on. The actual rating should be 2.5 Stars but I w...more

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Nov 17, 2011 Rock Angel marked it as i-put-down

Shelves: loc-m-pakistan, writer-reporter, 2010-contemporary, subj-pop-migration, genre-essay, format-soft

I had expected an anthropological survey of pop migration, I was wrong. This is more a like a really really steady gaze into Karachi's development as an example of instant cities.

We barely got into the birth of K as Pakistan's capital by ~p.60, pretty slow going for an outsider like me.

The author does not: 1. fully make a case for y Karachi is better suited for the study of instant cities than others; or 2. truly match the POV of a native. Yet it is probably still worth a read.

i've only gone 5...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Denali rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

The first 5 star read of the year! An urban planning/policy book masquerading as a history of modern Karachi. Inskeep interviews lots of fascinating people and fleshes out his travels and conversations with them with well-researched discussions and explanations of Pakistani history. Instant City does an excellent job illustrating the religious, ethnic, and political divides that are often difficult to grasp from newspaper accounts. In spite of all of this seeming dryness its a very engaging read...more

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May 28, 2012 Leilani rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

The author managed to weave together an astonishing number of subjects and keep them all discrete and interesting. The two main themes are the history of Pakistan & the Karachi area since partition, and the way cities are struggling to handle huge growth all over the world; along the way we get to hear from lots of normal people just out to do the best they can. I didn't know many details of Pakistan's history, and Inskeep told them in a fascinating, relatively understandable way.

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Jan 24, 2013 David Bales rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

A very detailed and interesting book about Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, with the background of the city's history, how it started as a small port city cultivated by the British in the nineteenth century, and its evolution into a massive metropolis of 13 million people. Inskeep builds the narrative around a terrorist attack during a Shiite religious procession in 2009 as a metaphor for all of Pakistan's problems, its conflicting ethnic clashes, tensions and horrific poverty. He interviews sc...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Karlan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, older-ya

On a recent trip to Cairo, I was amazed by the incredible unplanned, unregulated growth into the desert. A review of this book made me think that it might help me to understand how such a situation could develop, and it certainly did. More than that, it helped to explain the political chaos of recent events. This is a wonderfully readable book about a fascinating part of the world.

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Jan 06, 2013 Varda Nisar added it

The book is really nice, and as much as I liked the exploration of Karachi in it, I felt disappointed, that having talked to so many people and having researched so much, the author doesnt provide us with any conclusion as to who was responsible for the bombing, or how does the varied events come together to fit the puzzle.

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Mar 30, 2012 Meethil added it

Shelves: aborted

No stars.
I do not recommend this book.
Don't read it, don't waste your time.

It's not a book, its a collection of research ramblings. Classic journalistic observations, no story, no nothing. The least the author could have done is made it a good read - he should have realised he is writing a book not a (never ending)news feature.

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May 15, 2012 Jay rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am from India and I thought I was very familiar with history of the region. I learnt a lot here. I can now understand why Delhi has grown in such an unplanned way.
Steve Inskeep is my morning commute friend on NPR and is a as great a writer as he is a great broadcaster.

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May 15, 2013 Pete Nickeas rated it 3 of 5 stars

I kept hearing Steve Inskeep's voice. Great book though. Blending my two interests: Foreign Policy and urban governance! I never had a ground level view of the city, and I'm better for it.

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Dec 08, 2011 Kishwar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wonderful read. Highly recommended. "But when the public interest was neglected and the environment was destroyed, then private interests too, would be steadily and inexorably destroyed" summarizes what is happening in Karachi and all over Pakistan.

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Dec 07, 2011 Saeed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent book that reviews Karachi from its murky beginnings to its frightening present in an easy to read style filled with fascinating characters from the city's residents.

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Mar 31, 2012 Syed rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pakistan

An extremely wonderful book. A must read for people who want to understand Karachi from different perspective. The book reflects the filthy side of politics spoiling such a great city.

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Jul 19, 2012 Ahimsa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I began this book, I knew neither who Steve Inskeep was nor much of anything about Karachi.

Both of those things have changed. This is the best kind of nonfiction--filled with larger-than life characters, tragedy, death, idiocy, growth, and hope. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the greater world.

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Dec 30, 2011 Irfan Essa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A well-researched book that gives a balanced (and an outsider's view) of a city dealing with immense and fast paced growth.

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Nov 02, 2011 Staci marked it as to-read

Recommended to Staci by: Ryan and Lisa

http://litandlife.blogspot.com/2011/1...

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