OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES: ROLE OF CITIES IN A RAPIDLY URBANIZING PAKISTAN

Abstract

            Cities are considered as hubs of problems like crime, environment, traffic congestion, pollution, disease etc. But cities are, at the same time, are origin of solution of our problems and they are centers of productivity, innovation and machine for collecting people together. Pakistan’s urban population is expanding rapidly and by 2050 it is expected to be more than 50%. There is strong relationship between urbanization and economic growth. As Pakistan will observe rapid urbanization in near future so it needs to spend trillions of rupees on city building in the next 30 to 40 years. Planning decisions made today can have immense implications for cities’ role in economic growth in the coming 2 to 4 decades from now. Urbanization has gone hand in hand with economic growth. Objective of this study is to assess; Challenges of development like cities’ infrastructure investment, provision of basic services like water, sanitation, public places, affordable housing, connectivity etc., and opportunities cities offer in terms of productivity, innovation, idea and knowledge generation since cities host manufacturing and services sector which contributes roughly 4/5 of our economy.