Can we conceive citizens without a city or a city without citizens? Each is the raison detre of the existence of other. They coexist or cease to exist. But such coexistence has never been frictionless or devoid of tension.

A long history of cities tells us that migration from the rural to urban space has been a process of liberation from anxiety born of insecurity as much as it has been a source of insecurity born of anxiety in an urban uncertainty. What the city does to citizens and vice versa was broadly discussed at the three-day 10th Thaap International Conference 2019 organised with the collaboration of the Institute of Art and Culture, Lahore, in Lahore. The precise theme of the conference was ‘Citizens & the City: Urban Dynamics in Pakistan & the Region’.

The moving spirit of the conference as usual was the duo of Professor Sajida Haider Vandal and Professor Pervaiz Vandal. Both are well-respected academics and reputed professionals who have an enviable record of services in the fields of education and architecture and urban planning. The good thing about the event was the presence and participation of young men and women and students – the future brain of the society.

The conference, spread over three days and eight sessions in addition to the inaugural and the closing ceremony, discussed and debated a wide range of issues the citizens and the city are faced with that get more complex by the day in an unstoppable fast-paced movement triggered by ever changing sophisticated technology the scientific knowledge has helped in creating. Scientific knowledge fosters technology whose first application is usually witnessed in the city life with consequences good and bad. Scholars, academics and professionals from different parts of the country and abroad gathered together to thrash out problems and issues that beset contemporary urban life. Tone of the conference was set at the inaugural by the keynote speaker, guest of honour and the chief guest who happened to be Kalim A Siddiqui, Professor Dr Muhammad Nizamuddin and Professor Dr Tariq Rehman, respectively.

Mr Siddiqui, the chairman of Pakistan Council of Architects and Town Planners and president of Commonwealth Association of Architects, talked about the urban sprawl which had become a crisis level problem for cities of developing world, including Pakistan. The situation is exacerbated by the collusion of so-called ‘investors’ with the officialdom in the urban housing sector ill-regulated by outdated and skewed laws.

Mr Nizamuddin drew attention to the segment of aging population that increasingly fail to find a safe corner in the urban space where individualism and nuclear family rule the roost. Professor Rehman touched the subject from sociological and cultural perspectives. He highlighted the near lack of social inclusion our cities suffered from in the absence of open to all public spaces. In the face of increased migration from the rural areas our cities, in his view, tended to look down upon the newcomers, which would create cultural conflicts preventing the needed social and cultural cohesion a harmonious urban life needs.

In the sessions that followed the opening the complex relationship that existed between citizens and the city was explored through well-researched papers from diverse perspectives. In eight sessions dedicated to papers’ presentation some of the thought-provoking researches and explorations were shared by Professor Jakilien Trroy (Australia), Ghiasudin Pir and Sahar Saqlain (Lahore), Dr Kashif Khan (Waziristan), Professor Simon Yinfudin (China), Dr Kanwal Khalid (Lahore), Khatau Mal (Tharparker), Sofia Wanchoo Mir (Lahore), Noman Ahmed (Karachi), Muhammad Waqas (Lahore), Dr Anwar Shaheen (Karachi) and Salman Basharat (Lahore).

Imperceptible consensus among the scholars was that power structure and hierarchical order did violence to the citizens, especially the marginalised and powerless who formed the bulk of residents. But the citizens also especially those ensconced in the power do violence to the city by interfering it is organic growth driven with the sole motive of making big profit as the land and the construction have become a great source of quick money. The perennial question is how to make the city equally livable for all without degrading the environment and limited resources we have in a finite world because the city produces as much as it consumes in its voracious hunger. German poet Bertolt Brecht says something very relevant to the issue. Pointing to the arrogance and smugness at the start of the World War II which caused large scale destruction of cities he writes; “We have sat, an easy generation, in the houses held to be indestructible/of cities will remain what passed through them, the wind”. And after the war, he says: “I know that cities were being built/I haven’t been to any/a minor matter for statistics, I thought, not history/what is the point of cities, built without the people’s wisdom?” — soofi01@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2019