ONCE known as the city of gardens and famous for the abundance of its trees, Lahore now stands sadly diminished. Over the years, the development plans drawn up by its administrators have caused — the planners might say ‘necessitated’ — lush public lawns to be vanquished, green belts to be turned into rivers of poured concrete, and hundreds of trees to be cut down. Some years ago, the tree-felling that occurred as Canal Road was widened remained in the headlines for months as environmental activists protested justifiably. Now, the matter is in the news again as citizens, led by the Lahore Bachao Tehreek, rail against the chopping down of dozens of mature trees in the name of widening a service road in the central — and once incredibly beautiful — area of Gulberg, facing Jail Road. This, as Tehreek activist Imrana Tiwana has pointed out, irreversibly changes the character of the city, quite aside from the significant environmental consequences. The Traffic Engineering and Planning Agency, on its part, insists that given that the roads surrounding this strip have already been widened (that exercise also involved the culling of trees), the action currently being taken was inevitable if the goal was to prevent future traffic snarls. A flashpoint that seems to be in the making is an upcoming Lahore Development Authority project that comprises one 26-storey and two 19-storey towers in the area.

City administrators once announced their attention to ‘turn Lahore into a Dubai’, and many years ago, mature indigenous trees along Main Boulevard and elsewhere were chopped down to be replaced with desert palms. This anecdote adequately encapsulates the city authorities’ attitude towards ‘development’. While it is true that cities everywhere expand and new ways have to be found to manage traffic, across the world there are examples where this has been achieved in an eco-friendly fashion mindful of aesthetics and heritage. Lahore will not stop growing; do city managers believe that the concrete and tarmacadam can endlessly be laid down?

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2017