I respect your views, and yes, I've read Rafay's articles. I don't necessarily disagree with everything he says, but I do hold different opinions on quite a bit... for example, I do consider the widening of a main artery like the Canal road, in a city of 6-10million people, to be necessary. Trying to argue that everyone should get on cycles or start walking is fine and well, but Lahore already has a very high number of cycle riders and we still need wider roads.
elite. A capital without a mass transit system clearly shows the social inclinations of the people living there.
Mass transit systems are a good thing. Lahore's is in the planning stage while Karachi's is being worked on now. I believe a lot of the land acquisition has happened already. Islamabad is not quite big enough to really require a mass transit system, but I wouldn't argue against one there either. Build, build, build!
The labor jobs that you have mentioned can be viewed from both perspectives. While they do provide new jobs to the working class, these big construction companies evade laws by paying laborers below the minimum wage and our in bed with the authorities when it comes to real estate purchases. The idea of an ever expanding city is
Sir, you say this (hopefully), knowing full well that something is better than nothing. It's not like these people are being forcibly pulled away from better paying jobs and are made to build these buildings under threat... they are tradesmen and they make a decent living which would not have been possible in the absence of these projects. I live in Lahore and have had various small-medium sized construction projects done over the last several years. I can tell you that a raaj (mason) who was paid 400 in 2004 is being paid 700-800 now.
frightening to say the least. As the idea of living outside the city in a suburb seems derogatory and insulting to many in the upper
middle class, cities have been exploding. Lahore is the best case here.
Not sure I agree with this one... what are Bedian, Chak Shehzad etc. if not suburbs. They are highly desirable...
It is a city of around 10 million(or maybe more) now and the city landscape is devoid of any apartment projects. The here are many reasons why apartments have never caught on in Lahore. The primary economic factor has been the cheap and plentiful availability of agricultural land on the outskirts of the city. Property developers
Apartments are catching on. Every single apartment in the Park Lane tower building was sold more than year prior to its completion. The PACE tower in Gulberg is the same way; almost all the units have been sold. In the lower/middle class category, perhaps you are not familiar with Askari Flats, but they are massive developments with dozens of buildings... one location is close to the old Walton airstrip in Lahore. Every single apartment is occupied.
Many of the high-end projects in Islamabad and Lahore include very nice apartments. Karachi is 10 steps ahead as several banner projects, including the Meinhardt group's Creek Marina, DHA's Creek Towers (Creek City) and Emaar's Crescent bay exclusively include apartments as residential units.
have cashed in on these peri-urban areas with houses that are designed to attract a high-income class of resident. No thought was spared to what this meant for agricultural produce on the outskirts of town (destroyed and relocated miles away) and the size of the city (the automobile dependent urban sprawl is massive). The expansion towards Jhallo, Kasur and Gujranwala are points in this case.
A couple of things here... I too am concerned about the rising population and its implications, including reduced availability of agricultural land. But God has really blessed our country immensely. Consider a few things below:
1. We have hundreds of thousands of acres (if not millions) of land that can easily be brought under cultivation. Typically, when agricultural land on the outskirts of Lahore is sold and urbanized, the farmer who sold the land goes and buys 5 times his original holding in Kasur or elsewhere. I used this specific example because this has happened now 5 or 6 times in transactions I have either witnessed or been involved in myself. I am not saying we should continue to grow our cities forever. But I am simply pointing out that the shortage in Pakistan, by God's grace, is not viable agricultural land. Water resources are redirected when land converts from agri to urban. Jallo area is a good example of this. As some of the old agricultural holdings around the canal have been urbanized, the canals have simply carried the water further out, where it has been used to bring previously tube-well irrigated land under nehri cultivation.
2. The population density in Pakistan seems really high, but put it in context of the regional situation. India's population density is 2.5 times ours... today! If you extrapolate the reduction in our growth rate, it is highly likely that we won't quite double in size. Which means that we will never have to deal with the population density that the India of today has to face. We'll be significantly under. Again, let's work on curbing population growth, but let's not think that we are facing an impending catastrophe. As you said previously, we DO need to focus on quickly developing our available human resource more effectively. This can be a HUGE asset for Pakistan.
3. On the auto-dependent sprawl, yes, you are correct. We do need a mass transit system. But if I may, let me also submit the following: If you are familiar with Lahore, you would know that there is this common saying amongst those who live in Defence - "Defence say bahir jaanay ki zaroorat hi nahien parti" ("I never need to leave defence.."). And the reason is that while we call all these new developments "Lahore", they are really fairly self-contained. They've all got their own commercial areas, business districts, hospitals, schools and so on. Lake City - which we were earlier discussing - is the same way. If I lived there, I don't know that I would leave much, other than for socializing. Since there is a lot of industry in that area (Multan road, Raiwind road etc.), it is actually conceivable that many residents of Lake City would want to live there precisely because they would like to be closer to the factories/businesses where they work. Without Lake City, or DHA, you would actually be more automobile dependent than you will be with them.
High property values inside the city have made apartments risky business. Not because people don't want apartments, but because property developers want to maximize the money they can get out of a building. That's why the few apartment buildings in Lahore have dingy, narrow corridors (wider corridors means less square footage
I tried to address this above... I am not denying that there are apartment buildings of the type that you've described, but I think a quick glance at the upcoming apartment projects in Lahore, as well as the success of some recent projects, will demonstrate that a shift is occurring towards apartments.
wants to live in a place like that. Only 26 percent of Lahore's population has an automobile (around 9 percent have cars) and the extensiveness of its mass transit system is known to all and sundry. I have far too much digressed into a debate on urban planning.
We need mass transit. In the absence of that, one recent positive step have been these CNG Qingqis. Ridiculous as they may look, they are actually pretty cheap and have a relatively smaller environmental impact. The move to 4-stroke green rickshaws has also made them quieter... Not saying things are perfect, but one must take note of positive developments too.
We can have our difference of opinion and I'm happy to accept that I forgot to highlight the Software Park and the Sundar Industrial Estate. These are good initiatives which surely contribute towards a better
Thanks for your comments... engaging discussion.
Setting up three to five new small cities in Southern Punjab, South eastern NWFP, Interior Sindh and central Baluchistan to divert immigration from the big urban areas has been recommended time and again and the idea of Zulfiqarabad (underway) should be taken seriously. Restricting land available to these mega developers is not the way, restricting the nature of their projects can be a way.
This is a GREAT idea and I'm all for it... Gwadar was a start, but has not developed as quickly as we would have all liked. We need to develop more new cities. No question.
As for the overall economic effects of such projects, I do agree that they bring a rejuvenated sense of existence among the middle class and can be considered as an indicator of economic progress (albeit not totally). The urban middle class will continue to rise (as trends show), but the rural middle class, the heart of our
Pakistan is quite urbanized now, so these projects do impact a significant percentage of the population.
They also give people confidence. Every nation needs that.
population, is being left behind and alienated. Moving away from an agro based economy by promoting urban immigration (promoting as in social factors promoting it) will be detrimental to our economy in the distant future. The farmer is at the heart of our nation's will and he is being sidelined, thanks to a decade of a superficial liberalization and consumer financing that never reached the agrobase. Provide credit to the farmer, re-distribute the land, enhance crop yields and discourage urban explosion !!
Some of my friends have moved back from the US to start agricultural businesses in Pakistan! They are doing great! Tunnel farming, hydroponics, efficient dairy farms... it's all happening. An acre of land that used to give you 30-40K/year with wheat, is now giving you 4-5 lacs with tunnel farming! It's really amazing and I am personally super excited at these developments. With the land we currently have, we can feed three-four times our population just with better land management and more efficient cultivation techniques. Slowly, but surely, we will get there inshaAllah.