(I am glad that we have Urban Planner Muhammad Wasif Jalal in our team for the hard stuff like statistics and urban analysis. So the credit for that part in this article goes to him.)
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Here in Pakistan (in fact in all developing countries), we see, that our focus is on creating cities for cars. How? The development planning and infrastructure says it all. The development and infrastructure is supporting car users more than those who travel by foot, bicycle or public transport (mentioning the ones that are environmental friendly, deliberately). This in turn has increased the pollution and thus the smog in the cities. Daily we get news of hazardous air state, it is becoming a norm here. The cough and headache is also a norm now resultantly. Unfortunately, the city of gardens - Lahore is also one of the hazardous city from air pollution perspective.
But apart from environmental aspect which is now being discussed on many platforms and is alarming situation. What I would like to focus on in this article is.... Who are we actually designing our cities for? Will focus on Lahore, for a proper analysis and can be understood in other cities too.
The population of Lahore will cross 15 million in 2025 (Only in two years), right now there are 5.8 million men and 5.3 million women. In it, 0.5 million men those of migrant working population and their families are living back in villages. We can see the number of people in the chart below. So we see that children and youth are more in number and the culture and economy in our society doesn't suggest that youth can travel in cars easily, unless one is fortunate enough to afford and have permission by family or even our cities are not youth or children friendly (but that's for another debate). That being said, how many people in our city Lahore are considered to be fortunate enough to afford cars and its petrol (given increasing rates on daily basis)?
Well, the analysis says, there are high income households, middle income households and low income households and there are also no income groups that we mostly don't consider. I wish we do. There are few high income groups & the lower ones are more in number.
So do we think that majority of people in city Lahore can afford cars as mode of transport for daily basis? I don't think so. I hope you agree too and not defend it for yourself. Be empathetic and honest please. So, if majority can not afford it then why aren't we designing for the transportation that majority can afford and travel with safely. I feel it's high time that we think about others and not only ourselves.
I feel it is high time that we start creating cities for humans who live in cities, belonging to all social status not only rich or those with power. The consideration involves transportation that they can easily afford to get to their workplace easily, having places nearby so they can get there easily, also please consider the pollution that is causing sickness to lot of people, can they really afford treatment? Aren't we putting too much pressure on them? Aren't we the cause of increase in crime rates just because they are being forced to solve their stress problems and keep house running? Aren't we responsible for greater havoc? What do you think and feel about it?
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