Opinion

Fencing the cities

There is need to reform building by-laws and zoning regulations with a view to eliminating elite bias.

Dr Pervez Tahir March 10, 2011

Fencing the cities

Nineteenth century England witnessed the culmination of a process described as the Enclosures Movement in social and economic history. State control was used by the elite to fence agricultural holdings and acquire titles to land, which created a class of landless poor. The report of a recent Planning Commission task force on urban development comes close to recommending the fencing of cities. Given the backdrop of a high rate of urbanisation in the past, the report projects that around half of the population will be living in urban areas in 2030. Rural-to-urban migration rates have also been very high. This is a huge challenge for planners, but responding to it by building urban castles, and yet describing the approach as “safe and liveable places for all” is unlikely to make cities the desired engines of growth, especially when it is known — thanks to a revealing study by Reza Ali — that urban population has been underestimated due to definitional changes between the last two censuses. Interestingly, those who criticised the state for attempting, albeit unsuccessfully, to stand in the way of natural movement of cheap labour to urban growth centres, now want the condemned state to build bunkers around the city to make them safe and liveable to achieve higher productivity and growth.

The argument is built around the low density of our cities. However, Karachi and Lahore are already among the high density cities of the world, with some more cities ready to qualify. Citing places like GORs, governor houses and others as prime examples of inefficient land use gives good copy for the media, but these may be among the few surviving lungs of the city.

There is need to reform building by-laws, zoning regulations and rent regulations, with a view to eliminating elite bias. But the report talks about changing rent laws in favour of owners. The Land Acquisition Act, used for acquiring state as well as private land, is seen to be incongruous with the dictates of the market, where serious shortages rule and encroachments have tacit support of various municipal agencies. The report recommends procurement from the owners à la the DHAs. It sees by-laws relating to ‘commercialisation’ of residential areas as opportunities for rent, seeking rather than promoting appropriate land use as decided by the market. It also notices the absence of a law for the condominiums to clarify rights and obligations. In short, the report seeks, like all good free marketeers, linkages between macroeconomic and urban economic policies to make cities competitive.

Before cities can be competitive, they need to be in control of their own governance to set the appropriate norms and rules of the game to create incentives, attract capital and host workers. A city under siege and controlled from above is hardly the instrument to promote mobility, which is the very essence of change for the better, individually as well as collectively.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2011.

COMMENTS (8)

Azeem Salehi | 13 years ago | Reply Reza Ali in an article published in 'Economic and Political Weekly' had said that consideration has not been given to overspill beyond administrative boundaries of the cities, peri-urban areas and the ribbons of growth that have emerged along highways. He pointed out that the cumulative effect of “urbanization, connectivity and integration of services across city boundaries and contiguity of city boundaries have resulted in the emergence of clearly identifiable urban regions”. It seems that this aspect of significance in the spatial demography and economics of the country has not been considered at all by the task force. In addition, in the urban regions, however meaningless the task of fencing or defining boundaries of individual cities may be, it could also be technically tedious given the continguity of city boundaries!

Dr Nadia Saleem | 13 years ago | Reply The article raises issues which need serious attention. Fencing the cities to achieve growth has all the problems of single factoral growth theories which were never sustainable. Cities as engine of growth may look a novel idea in Pakistan but the planners ignore the attendant problems. First of all by creating a bias in favour of landlords by changing the rent laws, is a short sighted view. Yes, it will generate growth by creating the demand for vertical growth. The planning commission failed to project the impact on housing prices, the mortgage rates and the real estate market rates as a result of this zoning type of commercialization policy. The rationing of the cities will create the problems of ceiling prices. Before advocating this type of policy PC should project the demand pressure on these markets. Secondly, fencing the cities is against the law of nature and the principle of diversity. Our cities will be ethnic concentrates. In a society ridden with conflict, can we really afford such clusters of ethnic identities. Thirdly, the policy of fencing is against the spirit of competition. Our human resource condition is dismal in the region. It has to be used efficiently. The cities should compete with each other in attracting human resource. It will be based on transportation, health, education, and employment facilities. By fencing the cities we will create a bias for those who live in the city state and restricts competition.

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Dr Imdad Hussain | 13 years ago | Reply Having read both the report on the Planning Commission web and Dr Tahir's article, it seems he is right about pointing out the inherent contradiction in the report - its desire to deregulate on the one hand, and fence the city on the other hand. If one were to be charitable to the authors of the report and not assign an anti-urban bias to them, as Mr Riaz Ahmed has done in his comment above, let us assume that they consider our cities to be low density and advocate the concept of a compact city. Then there are two points to consider: first, as Dr Tahir has stated, our cities are amongst the highest density cities in the world (of the world's largest cities, Mumbai, Kolkata, Karachi are the top three in terms of density, with Lahore ranked at number 30); second, as a detailed evaluation of the social, economic, environmental issues related to the case for compacted cities reported in Journal of American Planning Association states "our evaluation of these issues does not support the case for promoting compact cities" - so even that case is yet to be conclusively made.

Sajjad Akthar | 13 years ago | Reply What Dr Pervez Tahir has termed fencing of the city, is what the FORCE charged by the Planning Commission has called a city boundry. But any boundry defined today, will need to be revised sooner or later. As Reza Ali's work (cited by Dr Pervez Tahir) pinted out for the 1998 census, since the boundaries of many of the cities had not been changed, the new areas opened up were outside the city boundry and hence were termed rural by the census which had used an administrative definition of the city. Thus a fairly signicant proportion of the population of certain cities in the Punjab was understated. So how will the new boundaries of the city be drawn, assuming that it is appropriate, to do so. One way, used traditionally in Pakistan, is to keep extending the boundaries periodically! Invariably the extentions come too late, and a number of developments take place outside the city boundary that have adverse or costly impacts on the city (for instance in Faislabad, the location of FIEDMEC). This process allows the 'developers' to locate just beyond the boundry effectively taking advantage of urban infrastructure without paying for it.

Ibrahim Murtuza | 13 years ago | Reply The use of "fences" or a "defined urban boundry" has been used in a number of cities around the world (and even in Islamabad) in an attempt to stop the growth and development of the city beyond their "boundry": some by trying to stop the inflow of migrants and businessess, others by prohibiting development of the city through zoning and land use controls. This has, in every case been an impossible task (except in the case of island cities and city-states) and has had to be abandoned sooner or later.

Ali | 13 years ago | Reply Let's look at Karachi now. Can anybody put a good argument together why people from KP will aid the Karachi economy? This is where much of the migration to the city is coming from and it's growing out of control. If there is a demand for more manual labour in Karachi then by all means let more people in but I think there are enough people to fulfill these jobs. What Karachi neeeds are more educated/enlightened migrants that can help bring businees from global companies to Karachi. Also the money Karachi earns should be spent in Karachi, not to subsidise the lifestyle of some Punjabi jaghadir living in Islamabad siphoning of our tax money via corruption.

Riaz Ahmad | 13 years ago | Reply There is a lot of people who want cities not to take up valuable agricultural land around cities, so they want to define a boundry for the city beyond which it will not grow. While there could be arguments on environmental grounds for this, it should be understood that productivity per acre of urban land is many, many times more than that for agricultural land, and so it is not a loss to the economy. But it seems there is a deep anti-urban bias in arguing against the physical growth of cities, which is expressed through suggestions to "fence". Luckily, they dont have the means to stop the cities from growing!

Nadir El-Edroos | 13 years ago | Reply Walls need to come down, these gated communities are exclusionary, keeping in people and also keeping them out. Alot of research in America illustrates how the growing suburbanization from the 1970s onwards led to increasing intolerance and conservatism. People need to live in diverse communities, exposed to a range of backgrounds, languages, ethnic groups etc. If not, with our current trends of boxing away different segments of society in different parts of the city with little or no interaction, is just a recipe for further intolerance in the future.

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