The city of Shikarpoor, although declared a protected heritage by the Department of Culture, GoS, in 1998 and officially given legislative protection under the Sindh Cultural Heritage Preservation Act 1994, still suffers from a rapid loss of its historic fabric due to a lack of effective planning and administrative policies to support or encourage continuity through conservation-sensitive development approaches. In the light of historical developments – events and socio-cultural transformations – it is evident that many threats posed to the city's historic fabric today are a direct consequence of the political, economic and demographic changes that the city has undergone. A statistical analysis of the current state of conservation in Shikarpoor clearly reflects a prevailing apathy towards the city's invaluable historic fabric.

The identified range of threats and problems faced by Shikarpoor today are not only related to its physical fabric, but also connected to the socioeconomic factors concerning the city's population. In addition, the existing by-laws and planning regulations do not provide sufficient guidelines and checks to ensure that the traditional fabric is maintained. The threats identified here seem to be more a consequence of unconcerned attitudes on the part of administrators as well as residents, lack of planning and monitoring tools, and a lack of awareness regarding the significance of heritage assets and the professional capacity to deal with these. However, none of these are issues that could not be tackled with a little effort on the part of the authorities with better implementation of existing regulations and some better, long-term measures for improving the critical professional capacities within the city administration.

Physical Condition and Threat Level

The interpretations derived from the physical condition of properties are based on two primary considerations: the integrity of the physical fabric and the alterations they have undergone. For both of these aspects pre-defined categories are established to enable a standardized format through which identified heritage properties are evaluated to assess and establish their state of conservation.

Based on the integrity of the physical fabric, the identified historic buildings are placed within one of the following pre-defined groups: Demolished – applied to properties for which prior information was available through historic documents, published sources or listing surveys carried out before demolition.