Saturday, April 9, 2016

Urban Transition in Pakistan



Urbanization is not a new story in Pakistan. Six to eight million Muslims crossed the new border and entered into Pakistan during partition in 1947 and majority of them settled in the cities of eastern Pakistani provinces of Sindh and Punjab. The second big migration flow towards cities occurred in 1965 and 1971 during the wars between India and Pakistan. In the 1990s, the anti-soviet insurgency resulted into further migration to the urban centers. Four million Afghans crossed Durand line (border between Pakistan and Afghanistan) and arrived in the North-Western Pakistan (Khyber Pakhtwankhawa) in 1992. In the beginning, they resided in the border refugee camps, Pakistan government forbade Afghans to cultivate land due to already existing economic struggle in these rural areas and the consequence was that they settled in the city of Peshawar and Quetta (Kugelman, 2013). After 9/11 incidence in 2001, Pakistan emerged as a front line state in war against terrorism.
One of the consequences of war against terrorism in the northern-western parts of Pakistan was the displacement of population towards urban centers and it further added millions to the urban population in Pakistan.
At present, Urbanization in Pakistan continues to be fuelled by war, insecurity, and economic necessity. Pakistan military offences in the rural north-west Pakistan have induced many people to flee to cities. Most of them are civilian but at the same time militants including Pakistani Taliban are also on the move towards cities. According to some reports, 8000 Taliban fighters now operate in Karachi (Kugelman, 2013).
From the previous discussion , it seems that urban transition in Pakistan is a result of wars , insecurity , terrorism , international conflicts , soviet invasion , war against to curb terrorism in Afghanistan  but  this is only one aspect which accelerate the process of urban transition through adding millions in the urban population. Urban population in Pakistan has increased due to the natural increase and rural- urban migration but now, natural increase has significant role in the expansion of cities in Pakistan.  
Being an agricultural country, Pakistan’s economy is based on agriculture and most of the mandi (market) places have been turned into urban centres (Ahmad, 1966). At the time of its independence, urbanization rate was only 17.8 % and it rose to 32.5 % in 1998 census that means every third person was living in the city. In 2013, urban population was estimated 35 % (PRB, 2013) and it will rise to 50 % in 2025 according to United Nations population division estimates.  Defining urbanization remains a difficult task in all countries including Pakistan. Some experts already concluded that urban population had already reached 50% in Pakistan on the density based criteria rather than administrative definitions of urbanization. Pakistan is urbanizing at annual rate of 3% which is considered to be the highest in South Asia. However, Pakistan is lagging the world average of developing countries, estimated 46.5% in 2011 (Ali, Haque, Husain, & Arif, 2013; Kugelman, 2013; World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision, 2011). Many problems in Pakistani society are the consequence of rapid expansions of cities in Pakistan (Mahmood, 2007) .

References

 Washington: Population Reference Bureau

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