Jahane Rumi In search of the unsearchable: O, my soul! where would you find your house?

City of our future

Published in The Friday Times
Lahore's problems are not intractable, says Raza Rumi after visiting an exhibition organised by OCCO
Attiq Ahmed, the unassuming leader of the Office for Conservation and Community Outreach (OCCO), encompasses both the old traditions of public service and the modern impulse for change. Among his many initiatives, his passion is OCCO. Comprised of a group of motivated urban designers and architects, the organization is a voluntary effort, financed by donations from individuals who refuse to ignore the responsibility that the bizarre “development” of Pakistan, and Lahore in particular, has thrust upon them.

OCCO recently organized an exhibition at The Drawing Room, a gallery-with-a-purpose managed by the young, sparklingly intelligent Sanam Taseer. This focused on Lahore’s urbanism and on finding ways to make the city into a viable, livable and people-centered metropolis in the future. When I entered, I felt I had walked into a melee, rather than a gallery. The visitors were all glued to the images and even the fine print of the exhibition.

A tasteful blurb set the tone: “What exactly is a city and what is urbanism? Does size only make a metropolis? Can you create a city out of sand, like the Sheikhs of Dubai, or is a city a breathing organism, shaped through time, like Lahore?” History teaches us that cities are living repositories of culture, and over the decades, we have reached a global consensus that a city needs to evolve in an organic, natural manner, celebrating diversity and complexity across the board.

As we walk through the exhibition, Attiq explains to me how in the 21st century, “the quest for resolving the city of the future is as vital as it was in the 1960s. What appears to have happened is that despite enormous social changes and a world-wide construction boom, the urban utopia has been reduced to the scale of a high-rise or a master plan.” Explaining further, he added, “What is clear is that the naïve quest for the ideal city or the ideal human civilization through functional zoning or free play has been watered down by reality.”

The installations at the exhibition, in line with the complexity of Lahore’s past and present, were both intriguing and diverse, using techniques from satellite imagery to innovative three-dimensional models, to diagnose where we have gone wrong thus far. Whether one examined the destruction of the heritage of old Lahore or the elimination of urban green spaces over the last six decades, it became immediately clear how the citizenry has been robbed of public spaces, whose accessibility a sensitive city must cater to.

As we sit down with our water bottles, Attiq tells me that for the last two years, he has been working on the Lahore project along with colleagues who wanted to understand the contemporary workings of the city. After identifying the problems, they have also offered solutions – a welcome change from “business as usual” in this Republic. OCCO aims for a “least disruption policy,” making recommendations intended to leave social and communal relationships intact – unlike more familiar projects, such as massive developments or highways that cut across communities, which can shatter social webs beyond repair.

OCCO has also been trying to create a dialogue on urbanization, inviting academics from the West and conducting workshops on contemporary urban planning. Historians have been brought in, and it was refreshing to see, from two installations at the exhibition, that OCCO has not ignored the past. Its researchers have even prepared a painstaking timeline of Lahore’s heritage, stretching back thousands of years. They are also working closely with the city’s future: Attiq and his colleagues – Ayesha Sarfraz, Moiz Hasan, Usman Sami, Saadat Ali and Mariam Niazi – are now being joined by students from the National College of Arts, including the intern Roushan Mir, who participated in the finalization of the exhibition.

The organization plays an important role as a bridge between global thinking and local realities. It takes into account the perpetuation and continuation of local identity, trying to maintain communities and communal harmony. They are well placed to reorient the priorities of the policymakers and implementers of development projects in Lahore, as they take an approach based on ground realities, as opposed to the “deterministic approach generally favoured by departmental planners in our country.”

Among other things, the exhibition makes it clear how Lahore’s conquest by cars has been a tragic turn of events in this originally pedestrian city, where the preferred mode of transport was once a tonga. The new “Zoom-Zoom” culture has destroyed green spaces and erased footpaths from urban plans; roads are constantly widened to placate the real estate mafia – the carless millions don’t even figure in the planning.

OCCO emphasizes the need for Lahore and its planners, dwellers and lovers to focus on pedestrian-friendly ideas, including the creation of an efficient mass-transit system. And they go back to the past, too. I was fascinated by a Walled City model tracing the intricate Shahi Guzargah, intended for the royal entourage. OCCO’s model fills a huge gap – the last model of the Walled City was prepared in the nineteenth century, and now sits at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Journeying through the exhibition made it clear that new readings for the city were possible. According to Attiq, the only way to preserve the Walled City is to make it more people-friendly, not an inaccessible relic. It needs a tailor-made plan for the use of the space, making both public access and urban services for the poor paramount factors.

Attiq defines an urban situation as a series of interlinked networks, making it important to bridge distances in such a way that they create a vibrant and inclusive urban design. Today, the fringes of Cavalry and lower Gulberg are linked by bastis and slums. OCCO’s study considers how these residual spaces could be turned into more comfortable, useful areas – a concept they call “green deltas” – if only the current obsession with roads would abate.

What all this thinking about the city leads to is really a form of social change, although OCCO recognizes that without political will, none of its solutions can be implemented. After visiting the exhibition, I thought that the Chief Minister Punjab, whose zeal for getting things done is now a byword, must be introduced quickly to OCCO and its ideas. More importantly, the Lahore Bachao Tehreek and other civic activists have to get connected as well. The organization also needs to find a way to link with non-English-speaking Lahoris.

But still, Attiq has initiated a great leap forward for the city. Where others have failed, Attiq and his brainchild have an excellent chance of success, as they are both realistic and solution-oriented – and are also uncompromising on aesthetics.