It is better we understood that our new issues and challenges are quite urban and the right place to address them is our infant cities
With a little modification in Murphy’s first corollary, I would say ‘Left to themselves, [cities] tend to go from bad to worse’. A city, in order for it to respond to the popular ‘right to the city’, has to be ‘objectified’. It has to be constantly shaped up. Whereas, mega projects in metropolitans are launched ‘in response to’ one or the other urban issue(s), little is done futuristically or preemptively in developing world especially in Pakistan – arguably the most urbanized country in south Asia.
The challenge is that by 2030 the ratio of rural-urban population would be equal to or more on the urban side. Pakistan will not only experience exponential growth in population of its existing cities but will also have more cities having one million or more inhabitants. According to a report of 2011 by the Planning Commission of Pakistan, currently there are 75 cities with 0.1 to 1 million people. By 2030, there will be Larkana, Bahawalpur, Sheikhupura, Sargodha and Sialkot standing in the line of bigger cities ridiculing our urban policy framework besides Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Hyderabad. This clearly means, in the evident absence of a well thought out line of action for our big cities, the smaller towns at the bottom – the ‘infant cities’ with 0.1 to 0.3 million citizens – have a greater probability of becoming uglier, rowdier and unlivable if they continue to be a distant policy priority. How to deal with it is the question with different approaches to respond to.
This piece seeks some limelight for the lower part of the city list in the country and makes a case for intensive care for these ‘micropolitans’ by not at all opposing mega interventions in bigger cities if justified.
The rationale behind such a policy agenda for the smaller cities is three pronged. The first is to tap economic potential of these urban centers as clusters. Take for an example cities up north in the gorgeous Gilgit-Baltistan and measure the returns from tourism, resort and hoteling sectors. It can be enormously exploited through innovative policies – obviously keeping the security issues as the foremost challenge. Coming down to the plains of Punjab, cities on the gT Road already contribute a lot to the national economy through their industrial and agricultural output and foreign remittances. Proportionate to the wealth they generate, these places can have more snob value if the private sector is closely engaged in fashion, entertainment and style sector.
On the southern side, cities of Vehari, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur and Rahim Yar Khan can thrive in textile and other agro-industries if local investors are incentivized. On the same lines, small cities of Sindh can benefit from the great economy of culture they have – Khairpur, Larkana, Dadu and Nawab Shah. The crux is to know these cities and evaluate what they can produce to benefit their inhabitants. Already there are economic activities going on, the need is to formalize, promote and protect them in a broader urban policy context.
When all these budding cities will have equal focus or say priority in terms of economic and social domain, the result would be a balanced urbanization in the future – the second goal. Lahore, Karachi, Rawalpindi-Islamabad would not be everyone’s destination. This will be followed by our third objective; to keep the cost of living in control which is constantly on the rise through rural urban migration and to reduce stress on our bigger cities. Imagine individual spending on healthcare, education, housing and transportation for a person going from a small town (with not-so-productive economy and inadequate municipal facilities) to a big city only to experience a terribly low quality life.
How do we proceed with it? Good urban governance geared towards making our small cities design sensitive is the answer to me. This means concerted organizational efforts to take each and every future intervention in these cities under a structured plan, taking all the stakeholders on board.
Without going into the terrible existing working conditions and standards of our municipal cadres, I would suggest that a new cadre of urban policy and planning graduates be raised to take care of this very important task. This should be followed by reviewing the existing laws, rules and operating procedures of urban service provision along with benefiting from the latest administrative technologies. Defining our social structures through the rural prism and thrusting upon us old realities as new – where a single head of a district was an answer to every question – would be erroneous. It is better we understood that our new issues and challenges are quite urban and the right place to address them is our infant cities.
Asif Mehmood is an urban policy analyst.
