ENGINEERING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOL.1, NO.1, APR, 2017 Corresponding Author; Email: suneela_mail @yahoo.com 1 Suneela Ahmed Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University of Engineering and Technology Karachi Keywords: Maqamiat, built form, urban morphology, design qualities, Karachi 1. Introduction roadly speaking, the components of the built form reviewed in the literature that make up localness of built form can be grouped into two sub-sections; a) Intangible aspects of the built form (values, meaning associated with the place associated with the built form continuity and appearance related to a place, weathering, past collective, individual memories and the decision making process) a) Tangible aspects of the built form (street patterns, traditional buildings, connectivity, material, ecology, form, function, context, style of building, aesthetics and material of construction). The link of urban morphologies and design qualities with maqamiat of built form helps explain localness in a context. Thus, this paper: b) Firstly identifies the key components of urban form and examines how the morphological levels of the built environment support maqamiat in the light of the literature reviewed. c) Secondly, it identifies the design qualities that contribute to maqamiat of built form. d) Thirdly, this paper reviews the position of different urban actors and their role and interests in developing a relationship with maqamiat of built form. The bigger question addressed is, how are decisions taken in a context of competing views about what should be built? 2. Urban Morphologies and Maqamiat of Muilt Form The post-World War II era saw theoretical propositions for studying urban form being put forward by English, Italian and French schools of thought. The Italians were interested in the rehabilitation of historic town centres; thus, they focused on typological study and analysis of urban form. The British approach, as put forward by Conzen (1969) [5], was to „map precisely individual plots of land and the block plans of the buildings that stand within them‟ (Gauthiez, 2004: 77) [8]. The French used a topographic representation „studying the plot patterns and their organization in the past‟ (Gauthiez, 2004: 79) [8]. Thus, the evolution of the urban form gives insight into the development of a society. Theories of place making and place identity rely on developing design methods through an explanation of urban morphological evolution, and their scale of intervention can be the plot, street or building façade, whereas theories on critical regionalism and vernacular architecture, though respecting the urban morphological evolution, design at the scale of individual building, in terms of massing, form and façade. Urban morphology and urban typology are the two most commonly used methods for research and documentation of built form in the theories of place making and place identity, whereas urban design methods are used for implementing design on an urban area. Urban morphology has been defined as having three distinctive features: 1) „form is the result of a process‟ 2) it embodies an „idea of type or configuration‟ which generates a „generic type‟ of urban form 3) „the generic types of form are related to each other in a hierarchy of levels of scale, which in simple form includes, street patterns, plot patterns and building patterns‟ (Kropf, 2011:394) [13]. Kropf c alls the „plan unit‟ or the „urban tissue‟ the main product of morphological analysis, which reflects the different combinations of street, plot, and buildings that make up an urban context. At the hierarchy of scale, according to Kropf, „urban tissue lies at the mid-point. It is the element B Urban Morphologies, Design Qualities and the Decision Making Process in Relationship to maqamiat: Case of Karachi, Pakistan Abstract: Using the Urdu word maqamiat in relation to the built form, a research methodology is developed in this paper which helps understand and analyse maqamiat of built form. Maqamiat, which translates as localness, helps assess what it means for a city to be local in the context of Karachi, specifically, having particular variables impacting the built form, but dealing with similar issues of identity crises as other formally colonized nations. The aim of this paper is to analyse the various physical components and the decision making processes that go into the making of an urban context, in order to be able to investigate the scale at which maqamiat can be identified in the built form. This paper highlights indicators of localness and weaves them together into an evaluative framework for understanding maqamiat in the context of Karachi. This framework ties in the decision making processes related to the built form to indicators of localness and various scales at which localness can be identified.