Expanding cities

K-P urgently needs a 25-year urban planning programme that carries across changes of government.

Not only is the population of Pakistan growing at an unsustainable rate, the mobility of some parts of its population is creating serious problems as they migrate to the cities. This was highlighted by the UNFPA Provincial Coordination Officer Lubna Tajik, who spoke of the population of Peshawar having reached 2.5 million, far beyond the capacity of the city infrastructure. The population of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) is about 22 million. In the last two decades, it has seen rapid unplanned urban growth, as well as an influx of refugees from Afghanistan as a result of growing militancy, military operations and natural disasters.

Large unplanned movements of people to urban areas bring with them problems of sanitation and waste management, inadequate electricity supplies, struggling health services stretched even further, no schools, a lack of teachers and other essential community professionals and most importantly, no jobs. There are millions of people living hand to mouth with no income or an income that puts them well below the poverty line; and it is unsurprising that there is a concomitant rise in levels of crime of all types.

People move out of dire necessity in the expectation of a better life elsewhere, and instead find social discontent and economic insecurity. The pressures of the unplanned population movement are impeding the economic growth of the province, and there is little sign of improvement on the horizon. Displaced people often have nobody to speak for them, which increases their sense of frustration — they are politically invisible. None of this is alleviated by what appears to be an urban planning blight on the part of successive provincial governments whose response to the growing problems is sticking plaster rather than a measured and far-sighted response. What K-P urgently needs is a 25-year urban planning programme that carries across changes of government. The likelihood? Vanishingly small.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2013.

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