A property development dispute in Karachi got some help from Google Earth this week. The article in Pakistan’s Daily Times is a thicket of acronyms, but if I understand right, a section of a park (one of a precious few in Karachi) is being developed by the town council for housing. The council claims such development was always intended, and that the infrastructure for it was laid in the 1990s, but petitioners have managed to show in court that the construction of sewage lines is recent (and visible in Google Earth). The judge has now adjourned the case for a few weeks so that the court can “summon residents to establish the facts.” (That’s a novel concept:-)
The Google Earth Community layer labels many of the places mentioned in the article. Here they are below. Included is an educated guess as to which construction imagery the court is talking about.
You can do a lot with photos, but as far as the park, if there’s a plan showing the park and it has legal status, it would be helpful to locate its boundary and show that relative to the sewer line and the adjacent parcels and development as well.
And I’d hope that the sewer line can be properly documented as well, for rate, for planning, and for other infrastructure impacts that the municipality would have to deal with – wildcat sewers are supposed to be a thing of the past.
Here’s a really novel idea: Get a surveyor involved. That’s worked for thousands of years.