- Let economics, if not common sense, drive us to respect nature
Nothing seems to make a lasting impression on our senses. An impression is good enough to inspire an action. The rain came and with the smog being washed away, all the hopes of seriously considering a reasonable response to the mega problems of our mega cities have practically gone down the drain as well.
Taught the lesson of “concrete” progress in its literal sense, we have adopted the belief that you don’t travel to the future through a natural environment but rather on a manmade wonderland of engineered excellence where big is always better and flashy is never too gaudy.
Further, the politically driven advertisements do allow us a peep into the mindset of the future that our leaders have envisioned for us. Such a future is never green but is laid with more and more roads, ever more lighting, towering buildings, and mega transport projects. That is what has always been boosted as excellence on the job.
It may as well be engineering excellence but at the same time it is suicidal planning. That could be well experienced when earlier this month the city of Lahore got practically devoid of breathable air. Other mega cities of the world have also been facing such problems for many years but that by no means should be a reason to get acclimatised with the crisis and to take it as something given for a modern urban hub. There might still be time to tackle the problem but it seems that the issue would make the headlines only in the next instance of intense smog. At the national level, it will be a huge mistake to consider smog as a seasonal event and one attributed to only some major cities of our country, the fact of the matter is that growing urbanisation would make such occurrences more common, and predictably more widespread. Also, smog is just one of many aspects of the negligence pertaining to the environmental cost of modern lifestyle. One thing is sure that this lifestyle is causing irreversible damage to our environment as a whole and our water, air resources, and land planning, in fact, whole urban planning i.e. mix of architectural, transport planning and the like are signaling a need for massive change of policy.
What has gone wrong in Lahore can be analysed to see what challenges lie in future for city planners. Blindfolded by a one-dimensional concept of the future, Lahore, like many other cities in Pakistan, has become a nightmarish lesson of poorly conceived city planning. Where a city keeps on engulfing its outskirts to expand, it eventually eats up its own support structure of necessary supplies coming from suburban areas around it. Slowly, Lahore seems to have filled up its appetite by churning up its option for clean air in not leaving much plantation in and around the city on way to its dazzling expansion. Like a tail eating dragon Lahore has locked itself under its own jaws.
It may as well be engineering excellence but at the same time it is suicidal planning. That could be well experienced when earlier this month the city of Lahore got practically devoid of breathable air
What is even worse is that an already inflated and boundless city has been hand-picked for all kind of government transport projects. This sounds like a call of doom for more aspiring internal migrants to get aboard a sinking ship. This aggressive pumping of money can potentially become an investment into a shrine of dead and deadlocked city-life. Though such projects have been initiated hoping to tackle the growing transport needs of the city, they may in fact be the harbingers of unprecedented problems for this megalopolis in near future. Of such problems the smog might have been an acute one.
The old city of Lahore seems to attract all, who join in to call the city their home, like a magnet. This means, that with growing urbanisation, the inner city and areas around it will keep getting an ever bigger share of air and noise pollution and the living standards would thus further deteriorate for many. Massive infrastructure investments in the civil sector will also tempt the manual labour, from across the province and beyond, to find work and to settle in the city and an unending migratory pattern would thus continue. That will definitely lead to excessive burdening of an already dilapidated infrastructure incapable of providing civic facilities to millions of residents.
The city needs more than roads, buses and trains. After travelling on these 21st century transport facilities people in Lahore will reach their homes dealing with third world problems. The air and water quality would present to them a shocking reality that they needed more than express commuting.
Lahore does not stand unique in terms of expanding without the consideration of environment impact evaluation. It is only unique when it comes to the extent of environmental damage and that of the smog menace. The city can serve as a good example forcing us to take all our cities towards a more environment friendly future. Laying ever more tarmac and creating a concretedom (a concrete kingdom) is not a future for humans but rather for cars and robots. Humans would always need air and food and a balanced ecosystem to sustain healthy societies. The cities cannot be left to grow in a haphazard manner but one that is compliant with nature and human needs.
The future of our cities should be envisioned in light of a rigorous environmental impact evaluation. Water and air may not add to GDP but there is a definite economic impact of ruining these gifts of nature. Even if the common sense could not drive us to respect nature the economics should.
