Urban planning is the process of developing and designing urban areas. Encompassed in that process is the use of open land, air, water, and the built environment, including buildings, transportation, economic and social functions. Typically used as part of a larger city plan, an urban plan should tie back to an organization’s mission and vision statements.

1. Case study of the results of
urban planning practice in Pakistan
PRESENTED BY SHAHANA JABEEN
SOUTHEAST UNIVERSITY
12/17/2021

2. Outline
Urban Planning & types
History of Urban Planning in Pakistan
Rapid increase of Urbanization
Urban Challenges in Pakistan
Urban development plans and policies
Urban Planning Practice in Pakistan
Cause of Failure in Urban Planning Projects?
Comparative analysis

3. Urban Planning
Urban planning is the process of developing and designing urban areas. Encompassed in that process is the use of
open land, air, water, and the built environment, including buildings, transportation, economic and social
functions. Typically used as part of a larger city plan, an urban plan should tie back to an organization’s mission
and vision statements.
Types of Urban Planning
 Strategic Urban Planning
 Land-Use Planning
 Master Planning
 Urban Revitalization
 Economic Development
 Environmental Planning
 Infrastructure Planning

4. History of Urban Planning in Pakistan
Both, the term and profession, of urban planning is still new in Pakistan, although its history dates back to
Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the world’s history.
In Pakistan, this term is still ambiguous; for people city and town planning is alike to family planning and
urban planning doesn’t carry any weight. Urban planning has a vast history; it evolved at different times in
different styles. In the pre-classical period, empires were found to have planned cities, mostly in a grid-
iron pattern, having amenities at different scales. Cities of Minoan, Mesopotamian, Harrapan and Egyptian
civilizations of the third millennium BC were the epitome of urban planning.
Pakistan is home to one of the oldest and finest civilizations, Indus Valley Civilizations, which had one of
the planned and managed cities of the time. The cities of the Indus Valley Civilizations included: Mehrgarh,
Harappa, Mohenjodaro, and Lothal; among these Mohenjo Daro was, in fact, an epitome of urban planning
in the classical era.

5. Although the world’s history regarding the urban planning is centuries old, but in Pakistan, it is still in limbo. The first act regarding the urban planning in the UK
was formulated in 1909, but in Pakistan hundred years later still there is not a state level legislation regarding the urban planning; except respective acts formulated
by provincial governments and development authorities. After independence, the only legislation regarding the town planning in Pakistan was Municipal
Administration Ordinance (MAO) 1960. Later acts were formulated at the provincial level by respective government and development authorities.
In Punjab, the MAO 1960 was replaced by Provincial Local Government Ordinance (PLGO) 1979. Some of the laws in Punjab relevant to urban or town planning
included: Land Acquisition (Housing) Act 1973; LDA Act 1975, Development of Cities Act, 1976, Punjab Local Government Ordinance PLGO 2001, Punjab Land
use (Classification, Reclassification, and Redevelopment) Rules, 2009, Punjab Local Government Act 2013 and LDA Land use Rules 2014 etc.
In KPK, the North-West Frontier Province Urban Planning Ordinance, 1978 was formulated.
Others included: The North-West Frontier Province (Provincial Urban Development Board Validation Of Actions) Ordinance, 1980, The North-West Frontier
Province Urban Planning (Amendment) Ordinance, 1980, The NWFP Urban Immovable Property Tax (Amendment) Act, 2005 etc.
In Pakistan urban planning has been regulated and controlled by Development Authorities; where there is any because not every region is that fortunate to have a
development authority. But the problem is: not every Development Authority has been functional, although few were established long ago; KDA, CDA, and LDA
were established in 1957, 1960 and 1975 respectively. The reason for the failure of the Development authorities is; these bodies have never been free of
politicization. These entities are not given the authority to drive the cities in the direction where it should go which results in the consequences like China cutting,
slum formation, squatter settlements and above all; the environmental degradation. Secondly, Master Planning of the cities is merely limited to documentation
instead of implementation, the reason is again the unavailability of legislation to exercise the power and implement the plan.

6. Rapid Increase in Urbanization 1951-1981 Statistics of Population Growth
Between 1941 and 1951 the annual population
growth rate in Pakistan was 1.8 per cent and the
annual urban growth rate was 4.14 per cent.
However, in the three census following 1951 (1961,
1972 and 1981), the annual growth rate increased
and reached 3.67 per cent per year in the 1972
census. The urban growth rate also increased to
4.85, 4.75 and 4.37 per year in the census of 1961,
1972 and 1981 respectively

12. Urban Challenges in Pakistan
Pakistan faces a challenging urban environment.
For example, Karachi, one of the top ten largest cities of the world with around 20 million population, confronts frequent power failures, water
shortages, transport woes, heat island effect, rising sea levels, ever-expanding unregulated informal settlements, urban flooding, choked drains,
and an extremely poor solid waste management system.
Similarly, Lahore has recently witnessed the worst smog in recent history. The issue has given the city an unwanted distinction of the third most
polluted city in the world, only behind its next-door neighbor Delhi and Central Asian Uzbek Capital Tashkent.
Karachi and Lahore are the two largest and most well-funded urban municipalities in Pakistan. The urban environment in other cities, except the
federal capital Islamabad, is even worse than one could imagine.
From the collected data, we found the following major urban challenges in Pakistan:
Climate Change
Unregulated Urbanization
Housing Shortage
Inadequate Spatial Planning
Ineffective building by-laws
Urban water scarcity

13. Urban Planning Practice in Pakistan
Within South Asian countries, in Pakistan, the urban population has increased three-fold in past 30 years, and it
is expected that the country will become predominately urban by 2025. Resultantly, the number of urban areas
has increased from 468 in 1998 to 624 in 2017 (33%).
In the case of Pakistan, government agencies have tried various planning approaches and plan-making
solutions to handle urban growth over time.
For instance, from 1960 to 1980, the planning practice was more focused on detailed land-use planning, which
resulted in Master Plans, Landuse Plans and Zoning Plans. Later, the focus shifted to the long-range policy-
oriented documents, which resulted in Outline Development Plans and Structure Plans from 1980 to 2000. In
2001, the urban plans were labeled as Spatial plan. However, after the implementation of Landuse Rules 2009,
Peri-urban plans and Landuse Classification/Reclassification plans are in practice.
With the recent focus of the government on urban planning (the launch of five million housing programs and
establishment of Naya Pakistan Housing Authority), the concept of master plans has attained public
recognition once again. In the last quarter of 2019, a series of seminars took place on the themes of
‘reimagining cities’, ‘rethinking master plans’ and ‘revitalizing urban planning’.
However, no clear direction have been attained. Since most of the past urban spatial plans have not been able
to achieve their objectives, the quality of the plans along with their implementation status has been heavily
critiqued in academic evaluations.

14. Urban development plans and policies
Nevertheless, the Pakistani government has made urban development plans and policies either exclusively or in combination
with the overall national development plan. These are discussed especially in relation to urban development planning.
a) Framework for Economic Growth: in the year 2011, the Planning Commission of Pakistan prepared the Framework for Economic
Growth. In this document, reasonable emphasis was made on making cities creative. The idea for creative cities was for promoting mixed-use
activities, encouraging energy efficiency, facilitating vertical growth, privatizing unproductive state-owned land, encouraging foreign land
developers to compete in the Pakistani real estate market, and focusing on research and development in low-cost energy-efficient
construction techniques
b) Vision2025: the next major planning document of the Planning Commission was Vision2025. It was introduced in the year 2014. It
acknowledged the serious urban challenges in Pakistan. The Vision2025 enlisted many measures for transforming Pakistani urban areas into
the most advanced and creative cities so that they can be on par with the cities of the developed world. For instance, Vision2025 proposed
creative, eco-friendly, and sustainable cities.
c) Climate Change Policy: the Ministry of Climate Change introduced this policy in the year 2012. The ministry confessed the serious
impacts of climate change on urban areas. It proposed several policy measures for climate change adaptation and mitigation. In an urban
area, town planning was made a prerequisite for the adaptation to climate change. The policy also desired low-carbon emissions by human
settlements with properly managed fuel and energy consumption.
d) World Bank-funded Sindh Resilience Project: this scheme aims to deal with floods and drought for building water resilience in the
province.
e) Urban Sector Planning and Management Services Unit Pvt. Ltd. (The Urban Unit): the Punjab government established this knowledge-
based private organization in 2006.
f) Naya (new) Pakistan Housing Project: the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has initiated an ambitious plan to provide housing
facilities to the urban residents at a reduced cost. The initiative, if executed as planned, will certainly reduce the housing deficiency in the
urban areas

15. Cities with or without an urban spatial plan

16. spatial distribution of various types of urban plans
This analysis reveals that majority of
the urban settlements (83%) in Pakistan
are growing without a valid plan, and
there is a dire need to focus on the
preparation of spatial plans to control
the harmful aspects of urbanization.
There are a wide variety of spatial plans
which have been tested by the
development authorities, offering a
broader spectrum to evaluate and learn
from previous practices.

17. Cause of Failure in Urban Planning Projects?
Some cities have reached the verge of failure from where it’s almost impossible to restore it
in an organized form. Cities once settled; it is almost impossible to erase and built from the very beginning. Can
one imagine of erasing the area of the Walled City area in Lahore, if yes, is it possible to do so? Likewise, there are
dozens of areas in Karachi which is in worse form than the Walled city of Lahore. Ignore the facilities for these
communities like Community Park, wide and planted roads, playgrounds, community halls, but what one would do
if a fire erupts there or a high magnitude earthquake hits the area? Is there any way to carry out rescue operations
there? Certainly no. The Same situation was faced by the British government because of the uncontrolled
urbanizations and unplanned growth of cities. It was first and second world wars which erased everything and they
started from the very beginning. But in the case of Pakistan, my anticipation is that there would be no third world
war to erase the slums of the country. People mostly argue that cities like Karachi having twenty million
population are not that easy to control; if it’s so, why not one finds heaps of garbages, open manholes, open sewage
lines, hanging wires, and encroachment on streets in cities like Tokyo or New York? So, what matters is not the
population; it’s planning. One of the biggest problems in the modern age is the environmental degradation due to
urbanization; that too uncontrolled urbanization.
There are certain things which are fueling the environmental problems. One of which is the conversion of
agricultural land into the urban area settlements. Statistics reveal that estate dealing has become one of the most
profitable businesses and now the settlement of new housing schemes, the inclusion of rural area into an urban area
is no more a wrong doing. Destroying the agricultural land and chopping the trees are a common phenomenon
across the country.

18. Comparative Analysis
Almost all mentioned national development plans desire urban development. The kind of development includes upgrading city
infrastructure, provision of civic and municipal services, developing and continuously upgrading urban zoning plans, and
improving urban air quality. However, none of them set resilient urbanization as a goal for mitigating urban challenges. The term
urban resilience is scarcely used in all these plans and policies. This is the biggest shortcoming in urban literature considering the
serious and widespread urban challenges in Pakistan.
Nevertheless, the absence of terms in national development literature does not mean that the government has ignored building
urban resilience. The federal and provincial governments have taken many urban development initiatives in recent years in
various urban areas to modernize cities and improve the livelihood of urban residents. For instance, the federal government in
collaboration with the Punjab government has developed a metro bus for the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Similarly,
urban mass transport systems have also been made operational in Lahore and Peshawar whereas, in Karachi, the green line urban
transport system is in the final stages of construction. Another major milestone in the mass transit system, known as the Orange
Railway line, has also been made operational in Lahore in collaboration with the Chinese government. Regardless of these efforts,
the public mobility demand far outweighs the supply. It shows that much more needs to be done on every front to combat urban
poverty and improve the miserable living condition of urban residents.