By Jalees Hazir

Over the past ten years, Lahore has grown at least more than twice to become an impressive metropolitan area housing over 8 million inhabitants. The same period saw development work carried out at an unprecedented rate. Incoherent and shortsighted, this onslaught threatens to mutilate the peculiar urban character of this ancient metropolis like no previous invader. So far the soul of the city has survived. But if the current development trends continue, it might not survive into the next century. It is that serious.

Lahore has the seeds of growing into a charming next century metropolis. Unfortunately, recent development measures threaten to turn it into an urban disaster. It is common to come across ill-conceived single development projects which have brought chaos to entire areas. The problem lies with the outdated scale on which the planners insist to continue planning, and the irrelevant administrative divisions they refuse to redefine.

Lahore can no longer be treated as a municipality. Its urban expanse has pushed into two adjoining districts and swallowed up villages, towards and farm-land around it. The tremendous expansion has made short work of all previously drawn maps and schemes which were obviously not designed to cater to this kind of growth. Many projects designed for the future are not even adequate for present needs. The time to save Lahore from the catastrophe that seems to be the fate of every large city in the region is running out. If there is no major rethinking and quick execution in the remaining years of the present millennium, it is certain to enter the next one in the company of urban nightmares such as Karachi, Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta. This, when it has everything to turn it into a metropolitan dream; everything but planners with a vision and respect for its history. It can only take an insensitive and low-intelligence set of town planners to overlook some of the most striking feature of the urban sprawl called Lahore.

The current planning strategy completely ignores aspects which should be defining it: its present size, its land and climate, and its rich history. Disregarded, these pillars of strength become monsters which threaten to blow the house down. Without extensive networks of roads and public transport which match its huge size, Lahore has become a medium sized towns, put one next to the other. It is a nightmare for people to commute between most of these localities on overcrowded vehicles traversing badly charted routes and traffic jams are common. The concentration of public offices and other facilities in the City makes it even worse. Cases of decentralization, where Registration offices or civil courts have been relocated in redefined districts, have not solved problems but have created new ones. Stripped of any civic sense the new divisions are bureaucratic and arbitrary. To be effective in what they do, the planners need to leave their chairs and board a plane. They can then begin to appreciate the magnitude of their subject. It cannot be managed if they remain struck in terra-thinking.

Only an aerial view can bring today's Lahore into focus. From above, it will be clear that the metropolitan area which makes up today's Lahore is no longer contained by the Metropolitan Corporation. Large areas which logically from a part of the metropolis fall under the Lahore, Shiekhupura and Kasur District Councils, and various town and village committees. A plethora of civic agencies, LDA, WASA, TEPA, WAPDA, the Cantt. Board, the Model Town Society, MCL, etc. with overlapping functions and no coordination, make coherent urban management even more difficult. The organization and division of administrative structures have to be radically redefined to meet the present needs. Luckily, and not because of a plan, Lahore's growth has naturally taken a sane course. It has grown on from the historical walled city and its individual burroughs have their distinct individual character. But one has to respect history to see it. A uniform spade of development cannot build these localities, it will only level them into one big slum. Each borough needs to be developed according to its peculiar physical and historical circumstances in order to restore and strengthen its uniqueness. The Inner City does not need thoroughfares and huge sewage lines.

Its civic infrastructure which functioned extremely well, before they started developing it, needs to be preserved. Its food and entertainment potential needs to be stopped. Its commercial overload needs to be redistributed. Its development concerns are very different from Gulberg (posh locality of Lahore). To the planners, however, this jewel is just another area for development schemes of limited imagination. Same is true for the City that the British founded. Before planning flyovers all over the place, may be it would have been wiser for the planners to check out the feasibility of a one-way traffic flow system in the entire area. Development which is build to the essence of a place only defaces it. And history is not the only thing that the city planners are blind to. They ignore the fact that the Lahore is situated in the middle of the most fertile plains in the world. To top it off, the areas has a climate that is ideal for growing an amazingly large number of trees, fruits, crops, vegetables, and flowers with little effort. This affords the unique possibility of urban development that can coexist with nature.

Historically, this was appreciated by foreign rulers, whether they were from Central Asia or Europe: they dug up canals, laid gardens, added to the diversity of fruits and plants grown here, and undertook intensive plantation. Though most of the pre-British efforts have been encroached upon and diminished to obscurity, the parts developed by the British are still the greenest in the City. Except for the southern stretch of the canal and isolated parks dotting some congested areas, the green tradition has largely been dumped by native planners. Though plantation is done more seriously here than in most other cities in the region, it does not match the pace of development. Planting trees along roadsides in new schemes is not enough anymore. If the green character of the City is to be maintained, large areas have to be declared exclusively for farms and forests, and no development should be allowed there. One look at how the City has developed after independence will demonstrate the necessity of such measures.

The northern and western parts of the area under the Metropolitan Corporation are the worst examples. Even along main roads are no trees to be found; the old ones have been eaten up by encroachers and new ones were never planted. In dug-up side streets and congested neighborhoods, solitary trees rise like few and far between landmarks. In the Eastern part, the new Defence is far cry from the lush older Cantt developed by the British. In the Southern Lahore, the persistence of greenery can be attributed more to unfinished development than a concerted effort on part of the town planners. Outside Cantt, this is considered to be the best part of modern day Lahore. The question is, for how long? Ten years ago, the area beyond the New Campus was agricultural. Serene villages stood amidst a sea of fields. Now residential schemes and commercial areas have gobbled up most of the fields and the villages have been turned into slums, their garbage and sewage threatening to spill into these posh localities. So far, the new schemes have many undeveloped plots here construction is yet to be done. This gives the place a look of spaciousness. Once, they are completely developed, they will be indistinguishable from the other claustrophobic older neighborhoods. In Lahore's case, history and greenery are not development luxuries. Lahore breathes with its trees. History is the heart which makes it tick. Without them Lahore would die of suffocation, from pollution that becomes more alarming every day, and violence and intolerance which are the hallmark of big cities where the streets have no names.

Source: Journalists Resource Center of Lahore.