nchecked urbanisation is a serious global problem. The scale and momentum of the expansion of cities are rapidly reducing fertile and green land and turning it into mounds of concrete and dust. It is important to understand that the mushroom growth of housing societies and commercial ventures is not just meant to fulfill the needs for housing and trade. These are investment gorges where money is being parked to turn it into skyrocketing profits without too much effort. Some of the housing societies launched decades ago still have empty plots. Meanwhile, new ones are being launched. Globally, cities occupy only three percent of the land surface but accommodate nearly half of the world’s population.

Peter Frankopan, the famous British historian, argues in his recent book The Earth Transformed: An Untold History (2023) that “just over 15 per cent of the global population lived in towns and cities in 1900; by 2025, more than 70 per cent will do so.” It is not a mere coincidence that the last century, which has seen unprecedented expansion of cities in terms of size, number and population, has also witnessed serious depletion of natural resources and phenomenal growth in the rate of consumption. It is actually the cities that have been understood as the civilization. The peasants, pastoralists, hunter-gatherers and indigenous people of the relatively virgin lands who understood the limitations of the land and were tuned to living nature-friendly were either written out of the story of the past or termed as primitive.

Pressure on urban areas is increasing because rural-urban migration is rapid. In Pakistan it is turning small towns into cities and medium-sized cities into mega-cities. The results of the 2023 census reveal this. Whereas the urban population of the country in 1998 was 32.5 per cent of the total population, it now stands at 38.82 percent. The province of Sindh leads in urbanisation with 53.7 percent of its population. The Punjab stands second with a 40.7 percent urban share of its total population. These figures show a fast-growing tendency towards the growth of the urban population, which in turn means the expansion of the land surface of these cities.

An important fact of urbanisation is the growing inequality between the elite and elite-middle-class areas and the urban slums. In accordance with the definition of UN-Habitat, a branch of the United Nations based in over 90 countries that promote the development of socially and environmentally sustainable cities, 43 per cent of Pakistan’s urban population lives in slums. Karachi’s Orangi town is the largest urban slum in Pakistan, with a population of more than 2.4 million. These slums have spurred a multitude of problems, such as informal and un-documented economies, poverty, crime, social conflicts, as well as child and female malnutrition.

Pressure on urban areas is increasing because rural-urban migration is rapid. It is turning small towns into cities and medium-sized cities into mega-cities. 

Most of the urbanisation is driven by rural-urban migration. Besides there is the natural population growth in cities. Major rural-to-urban pulling stations are Lahore in the Punjab and Karachi in Sindh. It is not a coincidence, therefore, that both are among the ten most polluted cities in the world. Besides being one of the top countries with high population growth rate, Pakistan is one of the fastest urbanising countries in South Asia.

A significant outcome of rapid urbanisation is the problem of solid waste management, which is growing day by the day. Even medium-sized towns have enormous heaps of waste lying alongside exit roads.

In the absence of modern technology, the enormous amounts of waste cannot be used to generate energy. Most of it becomes part of soil or thrown into a river/ sea. The availability of safe drinking water is shrinking in the cities. The same problem is being faced in the rural areas. Pakistan is one of the countries facing a severe problem of water shortage. The current per capita water availability is nearly 1,015 cubic metres. As per international standards, 1,000 cubic metres represent acute water shortage.

Due to the rising rate of urbanisation, problems of infrastructure development planning, poor housing conditions, unsafe drinking water, land use and traffic abound in most cities. New housing schemes are being launched increasingly at the expense of fertile agricultural land. This will ultimately lead to acute shortage of food. Food security is one of the urgent and acute problems faced by the global community.

There is an urgent need for government intervention to plan cities in less fertile areas rather than consuming green pastures and hinterlands. Cities need to be planned and facilitated in growth vertically rather than horizontally. The rural-urban migration needs to be discouraged by improving the living conditions and public sector investment in rural areas. If people are provided with good health and education facilties and infrastructure in rural areas, there will be no need to migrate to cities. Our big cities are becoming congested, unsafe, polluted and unhealthy. Throughout history, cities have been cradles of civilisation; we need to save them.

Dr Muhammad Abrar Zahoor heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1

Dr Omar Riaz is an associate professor of geography at University of Sargodha. He can be reached at omarriazpk@gmail.com His X handle: @DrOmarRiaz