The rapid growth of urbanization has resulted in tremendous pressure on housing in urban areas, particularly for middle- and lower-income groups. The formal sector has been unable to cater to the affordable housing demand, particularly for urban poor. Islamabad is the planned city and capital of Pakistan; its development started in 1960. A number of squatter settlements have emerged in this planned city which are increasing with the passage of time. The government of Pakistan, realizing the gravity of the problem, started various programs and approached at different times to address this issue. This paper discusses various international and national approaches in this context. Squatter settlements in Islamabad have been visited, and field data were collected through a survey from France Colony Sector F-7/4, Islamabad and recommendations have been suggested in the light of international practices.

The recent trend of rural-urban migration has consumed most of the open spaces in cities leading to higher build-up to open space ratio. This has adversely affected the ecological balance and environment. This paper is about the Spatio-temporal analysis of three major cities of Pakistan to find the impacts of reduced open spaces between 2000-2015. The data was collected using Google Earth Pro and Arc-GIS. The identified open spaces were classified into six different classes of open spaces. The extracted data was also validated by point data comparison on 30 different locations through Google Earth Pro. The results depict an interesting development as a decreasing trend in open spaces for the years 2005-2010 are shown, while an increasing trend is visible between 2010-2015. Moreover, consumption of open spaces has resulted in many social and economic impacts on the community. Finally, it is recommended that strict policy measures are needed to provide adequate proposition of open spaces in cities and to safeguard the existing stock of open space available in urban areas.