Lahore, Pakistan – Urbanization challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Lahore is the second largest metropolitan in Pakistan, and the capital city of Punjab province. The city hosts various historical monuments, buildings and gardens. Once a walled city during the Mughal era (1524-1752) and British colonial rule, the city has grown as a hub of commerce and trade in the region. The built-up area almost doubled during 1999-2011 and is expected to grow at a similar or even higher rate, hence increasing pressure on the city administration in terms of managing infrastructure and squatter settlements. Challenges such as lack of integrated urban development policies, unchecked urban growth, overlapping jurisdictions of land governing authorities and ineffective building control further aggravate the situation. Despite the recent positive developments like provision of improved commuting facilities through Metro and Orange Line transport systems, and restoration of walled city, Lahore still necessitates dynamic and structured institutions with technical, legal and regulatory support for managing the ever increasing population. Planners need to develop feasible, realistic and practical urban development plans, and ensure an integrated infrastructural and socioeconomic development in the city. Additionally, utilizing the underexploited potentials such as tourism and knowledge-driven businesses can help boost the economy and transform Lahore into a modern city.

Determining Factors Influencing Residents’ Satisfaction Regarding Urban Livability in Pakistan

“…In Pakistan, there is no national or provincial urban planning regulatory authority. This makes things difficult for urban planners to follow neighborhood design regulations, which can vary from city to city, and province to province (Ahmad and Anjum 2012;Rana and Bhatti 2018). Empirical evidences suggest that the environmental component must be acknowledged in neighborhood design, so as to improve livability perception of urbanites.…”

“…The trends of livability in Pakistan vary from urban to urban, urban to rural, and province to province (Parmar and Jalbani 2005). Uncontrolled urban growth has brought forth issues of unequal socioeconomic and infrastructural development (Rana and Bhatti 2018;Rana et al 2017a, b). Small towns of yesteryears have risen as megacities, and this situation has instigated pressures on provision of amenities, and as a result has aggravated current living situations.…”

Urbanisation, local food crop production and tourism output of Pakistan

“…Moreover, the Granger causality test confirmed that there is unidirectional causality running from local food crop production to urbanisation. As Rana and Bhatti (2018) argue, local food crop production is a driver of urbanisation because people are moving from rural areas to urban areas in search of new opportunities and employment. Unlike the studies conducted by Naidu et al (2017) and Naidu (2017), this study could not establish a significant impact of urbanisation on tourism output in the case of Pakistan.…”

Prospects of Public Participation in the Planning and Management of Urban Green Spaces in Lahore: A Discourse Analysis

“…Hence, there is a need to protect and sustain them [1,63]. Lahore, being the second largest urban center of Pakistan (behind Karachi), has more than its fair share of problems, as is often a hallmark of a developing country [64][65][66][67][68]. Urban green spaces in Lahore are under acute pressure, with new demographic trends and the resultant urbanization forcing land-use changes [69,70].…”