Harnessing the hidden potential of cities - NIKU

macro-economic environment in the country which promotes
small, independent entrepreneurship within
protective traditional urban environments, offering physical
and institutional shelter from the formal sector.
The river crossing at Shahdara carries the majority of
freight traffic destined for Lahore. As a result, the areas
closer to Lahore Walled City have become the freight
handling zone for the entire metropolitan area, creating
congestion and impeding access to the Walled City. The
other river crossings are more recent and are not properly
connected to the rest of the metropolitan area. The capacity
of the new ring road has recently been increased to
redistribute transport around the entire city and relieve
areas around the Walled City, but there is no land use
planning in conjunction with this development.
Metropolitan transport functions (inter-regional passenger
and freight) and central railroad functions continue
to huddle around the historic core creating an entrenched
inter-dependence between transport and the wholesale
and warehousing in the Walled City.
With the three maps showing the growth of commerce,
we can compare the change from a point in time
before 1947, when commerce was at the scale of a craft
economy and urban life was in accord with a feudal
social context surviving from pre-British era. At that
time, British period interventions, such as the water supply
system introduced in the late nineteenth century and
the railway station and inter-city bus activity, already
affected life in the Walled City. The mark of the arson
that took place in 1947 is felt acutely in the second map,
a 1987 recording of commerce in the areas destroyed.
The historical event of 1947 in conjunction with the
pressures of the larger city has affected urban form and
life in a context of questionable planning decisions (such
as the construction of district shopping markets where
housing could have been rebuilt), and of weakened regulatory
functions not very conducive to the safety and survival
of the historic quarters. By 1987, transportation and
wholesale functions are strongly conjoined and the longterm
residential population has begun to flee. In the
third image, constructed to reflect the conditions in
2007, metropolitan urban pressures now overwhelm the
urban fabric, government regulatory functions are almost
totally abandoned, illegal demolition and reconstruction
is rampant and the outmigration of residential population
is now pronounced.
These wholesale specialised markets function at a regional,
even national scale and threaten the historic urban
fabric with unimpeded demolition, pushing the residential
population out. While retaining its economic advantage
and enormous productivity, the Walled City has
been under the threat of losing its historic and residential
character. A process of relocation of wholesale, industrial
and retail activities from LWC is crucial to stabilising
residential use and the future preservation of the historic
neighbourhoods.
Infrastructure conditions in the Walled City leave a lot
to be desired. A piped water supply with a gravity fed
network was established in 1863 during the colonial
regime. Many places to this day rely on water pipes that
were last changed in 1910. A pressurised grid system was
introduced sometime in the last quarter of the twentieth
century and is fed by the main overhead reservoir and 15
tube wells. The system in place is not reliable and is
prone to negative pressures at certain points resulting in
contamination of potable water. Pressure is inadequate
leading to the need for online centrifugal pumps installed
by almost every household. Moreover, the water supply is
not metered. Upon the advent of the piped water supply,
waste water disposal became a serious matter although
the old drains along the sides of the main bazaars continued
to serve for this need as well. There are still some
15.5 kilometres of open drains serving as trunk sewers in
the main bazaars. In the period from 1979 to 1991, considerable
work was done to cover up the drains in the
smaller streets and lanes. However, due to the lack of a
system with adequate water seals, the network is rife
with rodents and pests. Moreover, there is considerable
leaching of drainage water into the foundation soil. Poor
quality of plumbing in homes results in the constant discharge
of water and effluent, much of which finds its way
into the building fabric and into the bearing strata of the
foundations. Structural failure has been endemic in the
LWC for decades.
The «organic» traditional urban morphology of the
LWC does not lend itself readily to the rationalism of
modern services. The electricity distribution network,
inadequate as it is across the metropolis under most circumstances,
becomes grossly contorted and poses a
40 harnessing the hidden potential of cities report from the oslo workshop