Ahmad Rafay Alam
The Economic Survey 2009-2010 is available and online for all to access. It paints a startling picture of this Islamic Republic and presents ground realities that cannot be ignored. And if one cares to compare what it says with the recent budget, the mismatch between what people need and what the government has proposed to meet those needs reveals itself in sharp relief. Continue reading »
Just a few days before the World Environment Day, the Punjab government has announced a scheme to grant the land reserved as forests and protected by law for agricultural purposes. With less than 5 per cent of Pakistan’s surface having forest cover, this new initiative is like a slap in the face of the environmentally conscious. Continue reading »
Ahmad Rafay Alam
With the completion of the latest package of the Lahore Ring Road, you can traverse the northern parts of the city and get from the airport to Ravi Road in fifteen minutes. All is changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born. Continue reading »
Last August, an unlikely but highly motivated group of artists, musicians and social activists in the German city of Hamburg occupied the city’s Gangeviertel buildings. They were protesting the city’s attempt to woo a “creative class” to spur urban development.
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Ahmad Rafay Alam
The Supreme Court and the High Courts have always been the protectors of parks and green spaces. Recently, the Supreme Court had a wholesale shopping market in Karachi agree to relocate after finding that the land it occupied was originally meant for public space. The Supreme Court is also hearing cases regarding commercial activities in a park in Islamabad. Continue reading »
Ahmad Rafay Alam
The Lahore Development Authority is in the process of demolishing illegally built highrises. It is doing this on the orders of the Supreme Court. More than anything else, this is the symbol of the burst property bubble of the mid-decade. Now, with competing statements coming from the governor of Punjab on the one hand and senior ministers of the government of Punjab, a massive oversight appears to be growing day by day: the protection of the tens of thousands of investors with whose money these highrises were built. This is a subject that has not been properly discussed, and deserves to be. Continue reading »
Ahmad Rafay Alam
A few days ago, I found myself in a room full of people who agreed that Karachi “has been turned around” and now “looks like a reasonably functioning city.” This impression had been brought about someone’s recent visit to the same city where gun-battles had claimed 28 lives in July, where news of the death of Rehman Dakait brought out tens of thousands of mourners to offer his namaz-e-janaza, where over half its people live in slums and where water is now critically short in supply. A strange opinion to hold, given the circumstances, I thought, and wondered what criterion must be applied for someone to completely overlook the real issues that face a city. Continue reading »
Ahmad Rafay Alam
The government of Punjab has just announced the sale of hundreds of acres of “redundant” state land in Lahore. The properties proposed to be put on the auction block include the Governor’s House, the official residences of the chief justice of the Lahore High Court, the commissioner of Lahore and the district coordination officer of Lahore.
It’s difficult to describe what Arif Hasan does. He’s an architect and planner, based in Karachi, for sure. But he’s also a teacher, writer, social researcher and a thinker (rare in this country). I could go on to describe his experiences, qualifications, awards and so on, but then I wouldn’t have space to write anything else. Suffice it to say that when Arif Sahib spent some time at a workshop at the National College of Arts (NCA) in Lahore earlier this week and delivered an open lecture on the concept and repercussions of the world class city (based on a paper delivered at a symposia held in Istanbul last month), I jumped at the opportunity to hear from a man who is, quite literally, the foremost expert in his field. I was lucky enough to have been offered an invite to the event and come out significantly more edified that I had gone in. Continue reading »
The Lahore Development Authority (LDA) has proudly unveiled what they tout is their new Commercialisation Policy, 2009. It is a list of roads that the LDA will allow “commercial activity” on, even though they were originally planned, plotted and lived in as residential areas. Continue reading »
The government of Punjab has reportedly agreed to give the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board money to repair over two dozen roads. Several questions regarding the important issue of urban management come directly into focus.
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The Kerry-Lugar Bill has become the black-hole of Pakistani political debate. Its din of conflicting rhetoric and opinion drowns out everything else — even good sense. Sovereignty, which reference to any nearby encyclopedia will tell you, is a quality possessed by a sovereign, of having supreme and complete control over a territory. In light of the KLB (it’s even got its own acronym), we seem to have got this concept mixed with ghairat. While all this is most amusing, it is no substitute for meaningful debate about the future of this country.
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Ahmad Rafay Alam
When the Lahore Development Authority published full-page advertisements inviting people to submit their opinions on whether or not 58 of the city’s roads should be ‘commercialised’, it struck one as ironic how an unrepresentative organisation like the LDA should suddenly turn to the people for input on complex urban planning issues.
Then again, there is much more to the concept of commercialisation that meets the eye. And most of it is incredibly destructive to urban development. Continue reading »
- Ahmad Rafay Alam
The Lahore Development Authority placed advertisements in national dailies this week of its intention to widen the Canal Bank Road. The decision is another example of how people with good intentions but no relevant experience can lead a city down a path to disaster.
Lahore hit headlines last week, but for altogether the wrong reasons. It is now the most polluted city in the country. The emissions from industry and automobiles have rendered its air un-breathable. It has no waste-treatment plant, so all the raw sewage it produces is happily tossed into the River Ravi. And in the next twenty years, expect its population and size to double. Continue reading »
The prime minister has announced that the local government elections have been postponed indefinitely because of the security situation. Not content with using the security situation as the excuse to deprive citizens of their rightful public spaces, the government has employed it to adjourn, sine die, the democratic process.
It is ironic that a democratically elected government has chosen to postpone an election. Is democracy no longer The Best Revenge? Continue reading »