Rethinking Pakistan’s cities

Despite one of the most rapid rates of urbanisation in South Asia, Pakistan’s cities remain inhospitable to ordinary working people. Runaway sprawl, an absence of high quality transit services, increasingly unaffordable housing options and scattered governance arrangements have led to places like Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Quetta and Islamabad failing to capitalise upon the vast sociocultural and economic potential present within them. In order to redress this, ruling elites must realise the futility of rigid ‘planning’ initiatives and allow ordinary citizens a participatory role in the evolution of their living and working spaces. Administrative measures are only useful if they are geared to promoting higher levels of freedom.

An important starting point when assessing the quality of urbanisation is whether it is largely influenced by ‘push’ factors or ‘pull’ ones. The first wave of inbound migration to cities in Pakistan was observed in the 1960s, during Ayub Khan’s proverbial ‘Green Revolution’ — when the US was funneling resources into the agricultural sector of Pakistan via access to tractors, fertilisers and irrigation systems. The key piece of information about this initiative was that ‘aid’ was predominantly being directed to big landlords, serving to enhance their power in rural communities, in turn aggravating exploitative practices in the countryside and compelling the landless peasantry and labouring classes to abandon their deep roots in village communities in favour of cities as a last ditch effort to survive. In other words, Pakistan’s ‘urbanisation’ has been a story of displacement, almost exclusively in response to ‘push’ factors, rather than a voluntary decision on the part of migrants fueled by anticipation of better economic opportunities, access to certain kinds of spaces, integration into particular networks, etc — otherwise known as ‘pull’ factors.

Soon after making their entries into cities, migrants discover that their new settling places are entirely inhospitable towards them on multiple accounts. The jobs that are available to them in trades such as janitorial duties, construction work, domestic support, private security, delivery service, etc are paid so little — and with abysmal, borderline dangerous working conditions — that a large proportion frequently skips meals on a daily basis. On the other hand, those that opt for more entrepreneurial ventures — most commonly street vending in informal markets — are faced with constant abuse, harassment and outright violence, with city development authorities routinely confiscating their equipment and bulldozing through their stalls without any compensation whatsoever. The justification for this is that these are ‘dirty, unruly, noisy’ people that are a nuisance to other city dwellers and disrupting traffic flow.

Indeed, the logic of governance in the context of urban management in Pakistan is such that it almost exclusively caters to the needs and desires of those with access to financial capital. This is primarily why pedestrian-friendly zones are nowhere to be found and the vast majority of urban land littered with road networks — bridges, tunnels, underpasses, flyovers, expressways, etc — primarily meant, of course, for those with access to vehicles. The vast majority of this construction work is contracted to a handful of companies, amongst which some of the most significant players are affiliated with the security apparatus. No effort is made to curtail or disincentivise car use, as is done in countries across the world by using mechanisms such as toll gates and parking fares and regulating the financial sector’s credit lines for car purchases.

Linked to this is the lax attitude towards runaway sprawl: zoning laws in most of Pakistan’s cities are such that they frequently do not allow for mixed land-use or high rise buildings due to restricted floor area ratios — both of which would enhance density in urban landscapes, massively boosting the number of activities taking place within small geographic areas. This would reduce travel times and lead to higher levels of vibrancy — in which commerce, housing, sports/recreation, cultural events, civil society initiatives, and much more, can all be accessed and spearheaded by the general public without having to spend a fortune. The potential of a comprehensive, high quality urban transit system in such a context, one that not only serves all city hotspots but also incorporates a shuttle service that can transport people to station lines, cannot possibly be overstated. Rather than continuing to spend massive amounts of taxpayer funds on roads, governing authorities would be well advised to instead redirect these resources to the procurement of modern day buses and competent professionals (including drivers, conductors, station staff, etc) to execute and oversee operations.

Last but not least, the longstanding issue of governance. Taking the example of Lahore, there are currently numerous authorities — LDA, TMA, LMC, DHA and PHATA — each with their own functions and geographic jurisdictions overlooking the managerial affairs of the city. This naturally leads to scatter and administrative confusion, bringing about the outcomes observed today. All these agencies must be replaced with a single entity responsible to the local government of the day. Linked to this is the lingering failure to genuinely empower local government systems despite Article 140A of Pakistan’s Constitution clearly stating, “Each Province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.” For this to be possible, transparent contestation for positions within union councils, tehsils and district-level administration — along with their fiscal empowerment through the PFC Award — must be ensured. At the same time, it is crucial to prevent mainstream political parties from capturing this domain: for which certain ‘feeders’ must be enabled to kickstart genuine competition during electoral processes. This can effectively be achieved by liberating collective bargaining associations: trade/labour unions within corporations and industries, and student unions within the higher education system. Both of these domains can produce political leaders who are exclusively reliant on their performance rather than social/financial capital.

Cities are engines of growth if run optimally — which, in Pakistan’s case, has unfortunately never been the case. It is time to dispense with colonial style extractive governance based on rigid and ill thought-out 5-year plans and allow spontaneity to orient the evolution of urban landscapes. Parks, plazas, playgrounds, libraries, museums, waterfronts, amphitheatres, art galleries, sporting grounds, urban forests, community centres, etc are the future.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2023.

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