Urbanization is the mass migration of population from rural areas to bigger cities for getting access to an improved lifestyle and better employment opportunities. But, unfortunately, the unregulated mass movement without any urban planning has led to rapid urbanization affecting the atmosphere and standard of living in developed cities. In the developed world, cities are the hub of innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth, but in Pakistan cities act as hotspots for discontent caused by overpopulation.
The results from 2017 Population Census clearly indicated that Pakistan’s urban population grew by 76 percent from 43 million in 1998 to 75.68 million in 2017, which means that Pakistan ranks among the world’s most rapidly urbanizing countries. Another fact to be kept in mind is that the urbanization data in Pakistan isn’t entirely reliable, because the semi-urban areas around cities are left out from the data despite them having all the characteristics of urban centers.
Though rapid urbanization provides significant opportunities for economic development, poor urban management gives birth to serious challenges. The messy urbanization is expanding major cities at such a fast pace that the government is unable to deliver public services and employment opportunities to all the citizens, which leads to problems like increased inequalities among the public, increase in urban slums, separation of residential areas on the basis of socio-economic status, increased poverty levels, ugly housing sprawls, deteriorating air quality, and rising transport sector problems, which play a role in exacerbating crime and other social issues.
Moreover, rapidly increasing population leads to a shortage of houses, hence the agricultural land around the cities is grabbed by wealthy land lords to develop expensive rambling housing societies for the wealthy with all amenities, which further widens the socio-economic gap. This horizontal expansion of urban areas is taking up fertile land surrounding the cities, which was previously used for agriculture, hence tumbling the economic potential of the country. Increased population in small areas leads to rise of air, land, water, and noise pollution along with sanitation issues due to the lack of proper sewerage and waste disposal system.
It is imperative for the government to take immediate action for the enhancement of urban management system, so that we can reap full fruit of the process of urbanization. In this regard, one important thing to be kept in mind by the authorities is that infrastructure doesn’t only consist of an extensive and well-developed road network, other infrastructural components like schools, health care institutions, playgrounds, proper water and sanitation system, a working transport system, and related public services are critically important for the effective management of urban centers. It is essential to eliminate the basic problems like absence of strong local governments, urban management and planning institutions, lack of public representation in the policy making process, and the lack of implementation procedures for the already developed policies etc., for the achievement of better planned and administered cities.
It is estimated that after 2025, more than half of Pakistan’s population will be residing in cities. This challenge can be turned into an opportunity by working on indigenous solutions like sustainable policies and their effective and transparent implementation through proper evaluation mechanisms. Moreover, holding citizens accountable, ensuring their meaningful participation in policymaking and providing them social justice can help control the looming challenge of increased urbanization.
