By Mashal Nadeem

If there is one experience universal to the average Pakistani citizen, it is the absolute dread of interacting with the bureaucracy and state. Whether it is to renew one’s passport or file an FIR, unless one has contacts or large amounts of money to subtly speed up the process, it is an hours if not days long ordeal to visit a government office and get something done.

But for women, this dread is two-fold. Not only is the process physically exhausting but emotionally draining, as they are exposed to male-dominated public spaces that make them feel unsafe and unwanted. In 2019, Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA) reported that around 2.6 million women in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa did not have identity documents – which means of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s 17.4 million female population, almost 15% of women do not have a say in their federal government’s policies and policymaking institutions. In a deeply conservative society like KPK, the reasons behind this can be speculated, but it isn’t hard to guess that having to interact with the public space is a contributing factor.

Furthermore, of the 112,307,995+ women in Pakistan, UNFPA states that 32% of them have reported experiencing physical violence in their lives – but this isn’t an accurate number. One in two women do not report their experiences at all, and it’s not surprising they don’t. The process of reporting and following up on cases takes a toll on our women, who live in a society that believes that a good, respectable woman belongs within chaar-dewaari. To go out and interact with government institutions is to leave the chaar-dewaari, and leave one’s izzat behind when they do. Because of this, for many women who can lose family support when leaving the house, the case is lost before it has even begun.

It’s clear that interacting with government structures is a struggle for women. So how does one fix this problem? The conservatism in Pakistani culture is not likely to shift in the near future, and one cannot wait for decades for cultural change. One possible solution for this has arisen in the recent decade: by digitalizing government procedures, women no longer have to navigate the public space to access justice or influence policies that can help them.

The benefits of computerization when it comes to government support are huge. Online government implementation services make it easier for women to access help they need. Introducing an online FIR system has allowed processes to be streamlined and less time-consuming, as well as more supportive to female crime victims, who no longer have to go through the additional trauma of filing reports in a police station full of men, but can stay in a safe space.

Similarly, the digitalization and computerization of NADRA has made it so women no longer have to go and wait long hours to make or renew their identity documents – a huge deterrent for women and their families. Having an identity card provides a host of benefits to women that they would otherwise be entirely deprived of. From registering a sim to opening a bank account, one needs a national identity card. For women specifically, the introduction of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) in 2008 highlighted the benefits of being registered with the government: BISP provides the female head of household with financial support, only through registering with a CNIC. According to the BISP Impact Evaluation Surveys conducted by Oxford Policy Management in 2011 and 2013, the women who had CNICs felt a stronger sense of identity and felt more respected and safer to voice their opinions.

Is the solution this simple? Of course not. The digital divide in Pakistan is huge, and as with most things, disproportionately impacts women as well. Yet with smart phones and digital access on the rise, this opportunity should be taken to move beyond simple digitalization to actual digital transformation. This change is what can create a system that actually supports women.

Mashal Nadeem is a research and psychology enthusiast, looking to learn more about other fields to increase her skills and contribute to the development sector. Her interests include public and psychological health, social protection, gender discrimination and intersectionality. She currently works at an NGO, Tameer e Khalaq Foundation, in Islamabad.

The post How Digitally Transforming Our Government Can Support Women’s Participation first appeared on Learners’ Republic.

By Amna Mahnoor Cheema, Ehtesham Arshad, Haider Ali Nawaz, Manaal Ahmed, and Safa Baig

For the purpose of this study, we are using UNESCO’s metrics to define public space as “an area or place that is open and accessible to all peoples, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age or socio-economic level. These are public gathering spaces such as plazas, squares and parks. Connecting spaces, such as sidewalks and streets, are also public spaces.” Mall road can be classified as a public space because there are no explicit barriers to entry on any person. Though implicit obstacles do exist, we will discuss them further in the report.

Being the most famous street in Lahore, Mall Road is packed with traffic throughout the day but also has enough sidewalks to assist pedestrians. Mall Road is one of the most privileged places in Pakistan to have most of the major cultural, civic and educational institutions including the Governor’s house, the Lahore Museum, GPO and major government high schools, colleges and universities. Many of these buildings are built in either Gothic or Indo-Saracenic style. We chose Mall Road as the focal point in our study on public spaces because of banks, shops, parks and universities it is the converging point of economic, leisure, cultural, finance and legal centres.

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By Manaal Ahmed

Lahore is one of the oldest cities in Pakistan. Consequently, it has undergone many conquests, destructions, and reconstructions over the centuries. This project seeks to uncover how Lahore was shaped into the bustling, ever-expanding and often confusing city that it is now. What are the forces behind the urban layout of the city and the implications of that layout for the residents of the city?

Lahore presented a unique opportunity to the colonisers. It had a vibrant walled city with its own socio-political rules and regularities but outside the city lay waste of land, tombs and abandoned barracks (Glover, 2008). Viewing the walled city as native, disorderly and beyond reform, they focused their attention on the suburbs outside the city. These suburbs became the site of the civil lines, railway station, Lawrence gardens, the chiefs (Aitchison) college, Punjab club, Gymkhana, Racecourse, the Church of Mary Magdalene and so forth.

These buildings were seen as “heterotopia”: a setting that is detached and in direct contrast to its surroundings (Talbot, 2017). This was not unintentional. The walled city was seen as a cesspool of disease, vice and disorder and the new colonial city was the direct antithesis of that. It was a city built for the new moral imaginations of the colonisers and the elite class. Spatial segregation created a distinction between the modern and the traditional, moral and immoral, clean and unsanitary, coloniser and colonised, and created that ‘the dual city’ of British India (Glover, 2008). The spatial imagination of the colonists was manifested in the construction of two Lahore’s: one within and one outside its walls.

The focus of the new city was on easily deciphered design as opposed to the winding gullies and the mystery of the Mughal city. Straight lines, right angles, the Indo-Sacronic architectural design and the presence of zoning were key features of the colonised city (Ian, 2017). Suburbs were separated on the basis of religion (Gowal Mandi and Mozang) and class (Model Town) as well as work specialisations. Despite the spatial differentiation between the old and the new, however, the colonial construction of Lahore was invariably a product of elite co-operation with the British. Lahore was divided not into Mughal and British territories but into class territories instead.

The Lahore cantonment was another creation of the British Empire. Due to rising concerns about Cholera, the Indian Army troops were moved from Anarkali to the Mian Mir Cantonment in the late 1800s (Ian, 2017). The cantonment was a perfect specimen of British architectural sensibilities. Its rectilinear roads went off in cardinal directions that made the cantonment easy to navigate, however, the cantonment’s design had many other functions.

The colonial construction of Lahore focused on two main points: control and surveillance (Talbot, 2017). The connection of the Cantt to the Mall Road and to the old city made it easier to dispatch groups on account of any riot in the city (Ian, 2017). The city was built to be legible and to be easily observable to the troops. It was also easy to transport troops from the railway station to the Cantt owing to the mostly straight roads. The cantonment also took pains to conduct massive surveys of the villages surrounding it for the purpose of ensuring cleanliness. However, in reality, it was a method of surveillance and control of the population. The cantonment also showcased a central tenet of the British regime: hierarchy. The space was organised in a way that the most senior troops resided in the centre while others moved further away according to their rank (Ian, 2017). The military hierarchy resulted in a spatial hierarchy of housing as well.

Evidently, the colonial conceptions of architecture influenced the private sphere of Lahore as well as its outward appearance. Houses in the Walled City were narrow, multiple stories high, adjoined and started at the street level with little room for sidewalks (Ian, 2017). By the 1930s, however, the construction of houses in the suburbs of Lahore was completely different. Building material, structure and use all were changed.

By 1919, a committee had been formed in Lahore to consider the planning of Lahore’s growing suburbs. In 1922 the Town Improvement Act was passed in Punjab establishing the legal framework for municipal improvement trusts for the purpose of rehousing Lahore’s Indian residents in a “neat Western-type ‘New Town’ environment” (Anbrine, 2014). Several new suburbs popped up, most notable of which was Model Town.

Established by Barrister Diwan Chem Chand and constructed under the supervision of Ganga Ram, the town was essentially based on Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Town ideal. The purpose of the town was to create a garden town to fulfil all socio-economic needs of its residents (Anbrine, 2017). The new all-encompassing town was a result of colonial spatial imagination that redefined the purpose and function of living space. The new town was a geometrically constructed myriad of public and private spheres. The town was divided into public zones that were reserved for economic activity and public buildings like schools, hospitals, mosques, gurdwaras and temples, while the private space was dominated by neat rows of bungalows.

The bungalow itself was a stark contrast to the earlier construction of houses. Prompted by a focus on the unhygienic conditions of the inner city, Model Town emphasized sanitation. They introduced flush toilets for the first time. The Bungalow, in contrast to the “traditional” houses, were spacious, mostly single-story and surrounded by gardens. The law stated that ⅔ of each house must be reserved for gardens in each Model Town house (Anbrine, 2014). The floor plan also replicated British sensibilities. They had a verandah, a drawing-room, a dining, sitting room, and separate baths.

Though it seems quite ordinary, the new style of building was entirely different from what had been inbuilt earlier. The British placed importance on Facades to determine the social standing of the resident hence, subsequent buildings also placed an importance on facades. This section showcases how the colonial influence constructed Lahore. This influence was not reserved for public spaces, rather it transformed Lahore from within.

Until 1985, the Lahore Improvement Trust and subsequently the Lahore Development Authority was responsible for most of the housing in Lahore (Van der Linden, 1994). It was able to build 97,000 new plots for housing for mostly middle-income residents of Lahore. This was mainly due to the Punjab Land Acquisition act 1973 that allowed the LDA to purchase land at lower rates. However, the act was repealed in 1985 and replaced by the Land Acquisition Act 1985 (Bhatti, 2018). This piece of colonial law made it much harder for the LDA to acquire land at low rates and consequently hampered its ability to provide adequate public housing. Since then, the LDA accounts for only 7% of the urban housing in Lahore, the rest is covered by private housing schemes or slums (Roosli & Tariq, 2019).

Private housing schemes boomed in the 1980s after the inflow of cash due to the Russo-Afghan war. Since then, the LDA has acted as a regulatory body that approves private housing schemes. So far it has given final approval to 73 private housing schemes inside and in the periphery of the Lahore Metropolitan Area (LMA) (Roosli & Tariq, 2019). Private housing schemes have become the primary housing agencies within Lahore but they only exacerbate the problem of spatial segregation.

Private Housing Schemes can also be viewed as ‘fortified enclaves’ that are privatised, enclosed, and monitored spaces for residence, consumption, leisure, and work (Perera, 2011). However, they are also a packaged ideal that has been imported from the global north. On one hand, they are marketed as luxurious spaces to express one’s individuality and on the other hand, they are means of standardisation of tastes. As Peter Sasanka argues, private housing schemes inform you of what is ‘good’ and at the same time marking something else as ‘bad’ (Perera, 2011). The connotations of luxury and class are enough to drive the demand for these schemes that are seen as opposites to the congested, often confusingly laid out central city. The more unsafe the city becomes, the more slums are created, and the more they become covered spaces of residence. Regardless of the fact that the development of these societies is directly responsible for the displacement of the urban poor or the draining of the city’s resources away from these slums, they are seen as havens of Lahore.

This segregation, however, is nothing new. In pre-colonial times, mohallas were divided along caste, religion and ethnicities. The colonial state segregated Lahore in terms of class and race and now the private housing schemes divide Lahore into the landed and the urban poor. For the middle class, there is no other option but to live in these societies because of a lack of public housing. Coupled with the fact that land is an important marker of class and a means to class mobility, the middle class continues to strive to live in these private gated communities, often at the neglect of the historic centres of Lahore (Asif, 2016).

The military has been entwined in the land of and around Lahore for decades now. Mainly it appropriated agricultural land for the purposes of defence however, in the 1980s it began its expansion to urban land as well. The military was empowered by the colonial Land Acquisition Act 1894 that allowed the military to lease land from the provincial government for “defence” purposes, however, the military has now become a private landowner in Lahore with the majority of its schemes having nothing to do with security (Saddiqa, 2004).

Schemes like Bahria and Defense Housing Authority are defined as “private sector operations run by authorities” (Guzdar, 2021). Pakistan’s role in the Afghanistan war meant huge foreign investment pouring into the country. Essentially it means that the military directly controls large areas of land within Lahore. This land is only allocated to military officers and only they are allowed to sell it to civilians creating a massive market for property (Saddiqa, 2007). However, instead of going towards development, it went into the real estate market. It served the army’s interests to have speculative land prices since it gave them high returns. These high returns, however, come at a cost.

Firstly, there are many instances of coercion by the military. The rural and peri-urban surrounding these housing schemes is appropriated, sometimes forcefully (Guzdar, 2021). Second, the speculative land prices mean that the demand for the land is high but given that the price is out of range for most Lahoris, the plots remain empty for years to come. Thirdly, the schemes are run like cantonments themselves where huge chunks of land are given to generals and officers are exempt from paying property tax (Saddiqa, 2007). Fourth, it leads to a concentration of wealth in the hands of a few wealthy military personnel. The military itself accepts that out of its 49 schemes, none are from ordinary officers within the military (Saddiqa, 2007).

All these factors have created a unique political economy of land in Lahore. The military housing schemes are in a sense furthering enclave ideals of the colonial era. They are seen as an oasis of security, amenities and class within the desolate, unplanned structure of Lahore. The enclaves not only operate in institutional isolation from their surroundings – but they also draw upon local natural and public resources in order to make themselves viable. The further the colonial spatial relations within Lahore that were parasitic to the city itself.

Lahore has developed largely in an unplanned manner. This has led to a massive urban sprawl problem. The Lahore metropolitan area has nearly tripled in size in the last 70 years (Bajwa et al, 2021). In 1972 the Master Plan for Lahore was created that planned to curb the urban sprawl and provide planned housing to the city. However, the plan failed spectacularly. The lack of planning, trained technocratic planners, coordination between the LDA and the LMC, no participation from the population and outdated data resulted in an inability to control the unplanned development of Lahore (Bajwa et al, 2021).

Given the situation, private developers began acquiring land at the peripheries of Lahore in the 1980s to build housing societies (Anjum, 2007). Land outside the city was cheaper and the rural population was easy to evict/convince to sell their land. The strict planning rules set by the LDA also didn’t apply in those areas hence it was both cheaper and easier to build. Owing to the rise of congestion in the city, there was more and more demand to move some places quieter. As the transportation networks developed in Lahore, it became easier to commute as well. These peripheral housing societies also came with all basic amenities like schools, hospitals and mosques that reduced the necessity to commute to the city. However, peri-urban development creates a new set of challenges.

Firstly, there is no penalty for delays in construction which means that a majority of these societies are just empty plots. For example, Izmir Town was started in 1990 has only 2.7% of its plots converted into houses (Bajwa et al, 2021). Second, the speculation of prices due to the financialization of the property market means that demand is always high (Bajwa et al, 2021). A majority of plots are owned by businessmen who have no plans to build on the land and are holding it purely for speculative purposes. Third, the land that is razed for these societies is often rural land (Nadeem et al, 2020). Rural land is essential to Pakistan as 60% of the workforce is engaged in the agrarian economy. Productive land is destroyed for the purpose of housing that lays empty for decades after. Fourthly, there are environmental concerns related to peri-urban development as well (Zaman, 2012). Environmental concerns have been the lowest priority for both public and private planning committees. For the Lahore Master Plan, no internationally recognised environmental feasibility study was carried out.

All these factors make peri-urban development considerably alarming. In the case of the Ravi Urban Development Project, all these fears have been raised multiple times with little consequence. This signifies that the concerns of the poor are of little value in the business of city planning. Housing societies are being built at record rates while the majority of Lahore remains landless and homeless.

In Pakistan about half of the urban population, about 27 million people, live in informal settlements (Roosli, 2019). UNHABITAT defines slums as a group of people living under one roof in an urban setting who lack permanent housing, enough livable space, or provision of drinking water and a proper sanitation system (Roosli, 2019). Despite the luxurious private housing societies, a majority of Lahore’s urban poor continue to reside in these slums or katchi abadis.

Katchi abadis lack the basic facilities to survive. In Lahore, both authorised and unauthorised katchi abadis lack sanitation, electricity, gas and proper road networks. Most importantly, the residents don’t have tenure security (Roosli, 2019). The city officials or private developers can force them to evict the settlement at any given time. In fact, that is exactly what is happening at the Gujjar Nala in Karachi right now. Despite these dismal conditions, however, the urban poor continue to live this way. The reason is that informal settlement is their only option. Without adequate housing for the poor, most people cannot afford housing in the city. They move to the city in search of work and settle anywhere that is close to it. For example, DHA is just 10 minutes away from the Qalandarpura slum in Lahore (Roosli, 2019). Katchi abadis are built close to economic centres and often supplement elite housing schemes.

This is not a coincidence. The colonial imagination saw the city in terms of binaries: formal and informal, rich and poor, good and bad. Unfortunately, the same binaries persist today in most cities in the global south because of capitalism. Global capital mandates development, it is necessary for a city to continuously produce more capital. The market-driven financialisation of the property and land means that new housing societies must be built continuously and their prices are purely speculative (Arif, 2015). This development however is entirely one-sided. It is not holistic or for the urban poor rather it results in the violent dispossession, segregation and peripheralization of the poor.

The persistence of katchi abadis can be seen as a failure of planning but in reality, it is the opposite. This is the kind of planning that has been going on for centuries in Lahore. The colonial state was only concerned with surveilling and controlling the urban labour rather than empowering them and the capitalist bourgeoisie state was only concerned with order and extraction of labour. The “world-class city” is just a space where poverty is invisible but it is still the crucial factor in the functioning of the city itself (Arif, 2015). First, the ruling prophesied class pushes the urban poor to the peripheries but then once the appropriate means for transportation have been established, takes control of the peripheries as well. Trapping them in a constant cycle of dispossession and neglect.

The purpose of this project was to understand the determinants of Lahore’s segregated development. By examining the political economy of land in Lahore, it is evident that selective development was not an unfortunate coincidence but a direct consequence of deliberately uneven planning strategies.

The colonial demarcations order and disorder, planned and unplanned, formal and informal, and legal and illegal persist to this day because they were institutionalized by the post-colonial state itself. Postcolonial elites inherited and reinforced the exclusionary geographies of segregated cities whereby the poor were considered a barrier to progress and denied a place in urban life. The segregation then resulted in the creation and perpetuation of katchi abadis and informal settlements that accompanied the luxury gated communities of Lahore.

Going forward, serious measures need to be taken to provide adequate housing, control urban sprawl, combat tenure insecurity and encourage building on empty plots. The first step however is to recognise the root of the problem itself. Without looking at the socio-political aspects that determine land acquisition and the prestige attached to land ownership we cannot hope to construct a solution for Lahore’s planning problems. We must first recognise the bias before attempting to correct it.

The post Lahore: A Landed History first appeared on Learners’ Republic.

As a mother of a toddler and a woman walking in the streets of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, I encounter many challenges. Our exclusion focused urban planning and management has resulted in issues confronted by women ranging from harassment, dim lighted areas, ill planned or no walkways to lack of adequate (and safe) outdoor activity available for women and children. This is  further aggravated by the fact that many urban development authorities are led by civil servants who are mostly men. Worldwide, women occupy just 10 percent of the highest-ranking jobs at leading architecture firms and urban planning offices. In Pakistan which ranks at the bottom of gender equality Index, situation is bleak.  With very few women at key urban policy and management positions, the design of public spaces seldom considers the daily lives of women and children. In addition to limited representation in planning, women, girls and sexual and gender minorities are rarely asked to participate in community planning and design processes.

Pakistan is one of the most rapidly urbanizing country in the world. However, Pakistan’s cities are made for and by men. For Pakistan to prosper, cities will have to be inclusive. Therefore, gender lens is needed in the policy and planning hierarchy of the government.

In Pakistan, the lack of safe spaces for women is not very high on the city administrations’ agenda. The reasons for this are varied: no feminist policy focus and few women in positions to influence policymaking.As a woman public administrator, I have experienced even a few small steps can help cities safe for women and children. For example, just lighting up the streets or bus stops can make it easier for women go out at odd timings. I took a few initiatives with the partnership of local community to create safe spaces for women using playgrounds of public schools in Rawalpindi. Women public servants at other places have taken initiatives like creating accessible childcare and flexible work timings for working women. Existing parks can be designed to make them inclusive for women, children and differently abled people

Taking example of Islamabad, the city is averse to street vendors and they are removed regularly to keep Islamabad clean and beautiful. It is interesting because in a survey conducted by the Delhi police in India, most women felt safer on streets with vendors, as the higher footfall acts as a deterrent against potential perpetrators. Jane Jacobs called it “eye on the street”.

There is no denying the fact that social behaviors need to change. However, this is a long and arduous process. In the meantime, women and girls should not be denied safe spaces to harness their true potential. That is the arena where women policy planners and implementers need to reimagine cities for women and children.

Public administrators in Pakistan should make efforts towards transforming cities and roads from car-friendly character to women friendly spaces. If a city is safe for women it is safer for everyone. Cities become safer with vibrant streets and safe public spaces. Public administrators need to engage more women urbanists in decision making process who will design spaces according to the needs of women and children.

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Quratulain Fatima is a Civil Servant working extensively on the intersection of public policy, gender inclusive development and conflict prevention.

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In Pakistan, public spaces and women do not seem to be a compatible match. Women encounter unique issues in public spaces. To ascertain how women-friendly some markets in Lahore are, I along with two of my classmates (Maira Rehman and Duaa Khan) visited two markets – Shadman and Banobazar. These bazars were picked based on their reputation of being more accepting of unaccompanied female visitors. We went as a pair in broad daylight to understand the gender-based dynamics, social inclusion, and accessibility to public spaces in these locations.

As a woman in Pakistan, there are a few things that need to be considered when going to public places:

1. For most places, women need not go unaccompanied for their safety and preferably accompanied by a male.
2. Women need to be conscious of how they are dressed.
3. Public toilets, especially for females, are rare.
4. Women will be stared at irrespective of their age or how inconspicuous they may appear.
5. There is lack of awareness about personal space.

In Shadman market, there were a few problems that stood out while others were, refreshingly, not experienced. On a positive note, the presence of a female hostel right in the heart of the market and a semi residential area in proximity means that a lot of women and children present in the nearby public park seem comfortable being there. On the flip side, there are no restrooms available for the visitors. Most of the available space is used for car parking with no pavement space for walking. In the evenings, the streets are rarely lit raising safety concerns especially for women. The presence of streetlights, flood lights and shop lighting provide a clear view of the public spaces. This contributes to women’s perception of safety and access to these spaces.

Image: Shadman Market Lahore

Bano Bazaar is commonly filled with women and gives a sense of safety in numbers. However, the narrow alleys leading to the inner parts of the market lack adequate street lighting. As a result, women try to avoid the dimly lit pathways. Moreover, an issue faced in both these markets is that the interconnecting alleys and shops on multiple stories in certain areas can only be accessed through staircases that go up and down. This hinders access to the elderly and differently abled women in the absence of supporting ramp structures for easier access.

Image: Bano Bazar Lahore

Visit to these two marketplaces helped us draw important lessons for urban planning. The faults in design of our urban spaces and a lack of awareness on how that impacts and restricts access to them contributes to marginalization of women. This results in default segregation and restrictions on access to public spaces based on gender. Lack of female urban planners and a gender lens perspective results in negligible involvement of women in planning and designing urban spaces. It also leads to gaps in intellectual debate and implementation of solutions to problems faced disproportionately by women.

The culture of having agency over how women dress and the role of male family members in deciding where women can go adds a layer of complexity to the overall issue of acceptability of women in public places. All these issues culminate in a lack of trust between women and the cities they inhabit. The concept of women enjoying the public space to relax and not specifically linked to a purpose or task is not understood by the patriarchal mindset. Lessons can be learnt from healthier public spaces in other countries such as the Grand Bazaar in Turkey where the women spend their time freely even among the narrow alleys.

Our city planners and administrators need to understand women and children are in majority population in urban centers. Yet they are ignored while making decisions that impact urban life. Our message to decision makers is “Cities are safe when women feel safer in public spaces and cities are beautiful when women and children consider public spaces as living rooms of cities”.

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Wahiba Junejo is a Law grad of LUMS class of 2021, currently pursuing civil and criminal litigation in Karachi. Her research interests include legal and policy critique.

The post Urban Bazaars and Women – A Complicated Relationship first appeared on Learners’ Republic.

Image credit: Dawn news

During the past year, city administrations in Pakistan have shut down parksseveral times due to COVID-19 pandemic. This policy stands in stark contrast with developed countries across the globe. These countries allowed the use of parks for small gatherings. In fact, parks were deemed as a safe public space, allowing people respite from social isolation. As a result, there was a surge in park visitation after the initial lockdown was eased.

It is easier to institute social distancing measures in parks given the expansive space and the abundant airflow. Parks allow people to socialize while observing SOPs and seek out nature rather than being cocooned in their houses, considering work from home policies adopted by majority of workplaces. Further, greener spaces help with anxiety and depression, problems that have become amplified during the pandemic. Thus, it is not surprising that parks have become a popular public space for socially distant hangouts, picnics, exercise, and even meetings. This has increased the value of urban parks across the world, except in Pakistan.

While cheap and easily accessible recreational activities have always been scarce in Pakistan, the pandemic has completely upended the possibility for most. A close look at Karachi reveals how the city has little to offer to those who cannot pay for recreation during the pandemic. Public parks and beaches offer the cheapest recreational activity. Yet, over the last year, access to them has been heavily restricted for the public owing to social distancing concerns.

The Pakistani government’s recent decision to shut down parks over the Eid ul Fitr holidays due to the surge in COVID-19 cases was lauded by most. However, an unintended consequence of this decision was discriminatory law enforcement practices. For instance, people traveling in private cars were seldom questioned about their whereabouts on Eid by the police. On the other hand, the police specifically scrutinized and harassed commuters on motorbikes and cycles andblocked off their access to the beach and other parks on the Clifton belt.

Large investments have been made towards beautification of public parks such as Bagh-ibn-e-Qasim in Clifton. These investments should have focused towards developing urban parks as community-centric spaces which are accessible to everyone. Beautification is not a subpar objective, but it should be complemented with utility. Parks can help boost local economic activity, increase property values, act as natural drains to prevent urban flooding, and offer a multi-cultural space to engage the local community.Our government needs revise its approach towards parks and recreation.

Apart from investing in parks on the Clifton belt, barren tracts of land can be transformed into small parks.These can be developed through community participation which will allow citizens to take ownership of their development and maintenance. These parks can be developed in each neighborhood to provide a safe recreational space for residents during the pandemic.

The government must use this pandemic as an opportunity to reimagine parks and enhance their utility for the public. The development of such public spaces is crucial to maintain a semblance of normalcy during the pandemic for most people. The utility of this action would certainly outlast the pandemic and contribute towards creating a more inclusive society.

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Uswah Fatima is a senior at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, pursuing a major in Sociology and Anthropology. Her current research domain focuses on the gendered impact of Covid-19 on frontline health workers.

The post Parks & the Pandemic first appeared on Learners’ Republic.

Abstract

This volume is a collection of Naved Iftikhar’s OpEds published in different newspapers from 2015-2021, compiled in the following sections:
1. Economic Governance
2. Startups & Entrepreneurship
3. Public Policy
4. Cities & Urban Governance
5. Economic Research

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