Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Friday announced an ambitious plan to develop a Manhattan-style city in Islamabad, unveiling a land-auction model that would let investors pay for prime plots with a share of their projects’ inventory instead of upfront cash.
Naqvi made the announcement while speaking at the Saudi-Pak Real Estate Expo in Lahore, where he also disclosed that the government plans to auction large plots in the capital for high-rise hotels, shopping malls and residential complexes. The auction would open at 15 percent of a project’s inventory, with investors free to bid a higher share, and the plots would come in one-, three- and six-acre sizes with a minimum building height of 600 feet.
To keep the momentum, the minister set tight timelines. Investors would be required to complete their projects within two years of approval, and the Ministry of Interior would handle all approvals through a one-window operation expected to wrap up within three to four weeks. The aim, Naqvi said, is to remove the bureaucratic delays that have long frustrated real estate investment in the capital.
Transparency is meant to be built into the process. The government plans to form a five-member auction committee comprising representatives of the National Accountability Bureau, the Special Investment Facilitation Council and the Federal Investigation Agency, alongside the Capital Development Authority and a judge — though it has yet to decide whether the judge would be serving or retired.
The centerpiece of the announcement is the proposed Manhattan-style city itself: a 1,000-acre development behind the Prime Minister’s House featuring residential and commercial complexes clustered around a central park and lake. The project would operate under its own separate set of laws, rules and standard operating procedures — a special governance zone modeled, in Naqvi’s framing, on Manhattan’s dense vertical skyline.
Naqvi added that the government also plans to build a 450-acre safari park in Islamabad, which he described as potentially the largest in Asia — a recreational anchor meant to sit alongside the commercial push.
The pitch is aimed squarely at foreign capital. The minister said the proposed developments are designed to attract foreign investment, particularly from Saudi Arabia, while expanding Islamabad’s residential and recreational facilities. The timing of the announcement at a Saudi-Pakistan expo underscores where the government expects much of that money to come from.
If the auctions proceed as outlined, Islamabad could see its skyline change faster than any plan has ever promised. But the two-year completion rule, the inventory-sharing auction model and the special legal zone all remain announcements for now — the real test will be whether investors bid, approvals land in weeks rather than years, and the first 600-foot towers actually break ground.
