Stimulating The Citizen Commotion

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Thesis statement

Stimulating the citizen’s commotion is a series of proposed interventions that lead to the co-production of a community’s identity, establish their ties and revitalize the local resources. This aims to precipitate their presence in the system of decision making for the creation of an inclusive urban narrative.

By Zara Farooq and Maha Aslam

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ABSTRACT Stimulating the citizen commotion is a meshwork of proposed interventions that lead to the co-production of a community’s identity, establish their ties and revitalize their local network of resources. This project aims to precipitate their presence in the system of decision making for the creation of an inclusive urban narrative in the city of Lahore; a city known for its rich culture and heritage. The opposing problematic scenario inculcated in the city originates from the global strings that have pulled on the resources of the country and driven out capitalized advantages for their own expansions. This slowly transcends itself into the realities of the national dilemmas of the political confusion induced by very personalized agendas of individuals in the decision making processes that have steered Pakistan’s urban policies into irrelevant tangents. The situational juxtaposition of these elements of change in the history of Lahore have fabricated the urban scape in the heart of the city today. One of such places is the glorious Anarkali Bazaar Which paints a very intrinsic picture of history, culture and local knowledge that exists as an effervescing vessel of a constantly moving narrative. This project is probing into the depths of these contradictory realities using the indicators of social infrastructure and community uplift. The aim of the project is to create a meshwork of connections that co-produces the citizen identity, establishes the local ties of for Anarkali.

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The armature of the design strategy is organized in three phases of interventions: an engaging assemblage of the categorized components extracted from Anarkali, an activation phase of spatializing and co-producing the connectivity within the public realm and a projection of these linkages towards the larger ecology of the city of Lahore. The process of the project was initiated through a theoretical and a spatial analysis of the current development projects in Lahore focusing on the $1.6 billion CPEC led Orange Metro Line Project. This unfolded into a convergence of a densely problematic neighborhood, Anarkali, leading into a micro study of its community and the social fractures of the urban narratives which exposed a pattern of the disruptions induced by the development capital. Using this premise the project attempts to draw connections within these polarities and intersections of the urban ecology of Anarkali and then reiterate the patterns of the city of enablers.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was a collaborative effort between Zara Farooq and Maha Aslam.

The journey of developing this thesis has been incredibly challenging. It would not have been possible without the support and the constant source of motivation from each other.

We would like to thank our professors Miguel, Bill, Evren and Gabriela for their constant support and guidance all throughout this graduate school experience.

We would also like to thank our parents who have been the constant source of affection and help in our time in the United States.

We dedicate this thesis work to the people of Lahore, to their passions and their dreams, to their fervent souls, to their open warmth and to their voices. May we get stronger, may we get louder!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Keywords and terminologies

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Chapter: 1 | situating the urban narrative |

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The neo-colonization of the globalizing south

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Politics of Infrastructure

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Socialist governments to private-public partnerships: An overview of the political climate

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The contradictory imaginaries reshaping the city of Lahore

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Chapter: 2 | thesis process: from the global perspective to the neighborhood |

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Analysis leading to anarkali

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Field work – visiting anarkali

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The formal Interviews

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Local case-studies of community engagement: orangi pilot project

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Chapter 3: | premise and rationalization of design |

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Introduction

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The urban narrative cloud

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The commotion of the grassroots

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The site: anarkali, Lahore

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The commotion in anarkali

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Food culture

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The Chaaye culture

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The Sunday book bazaar

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Media and activism

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The carriers

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Chapter 4: | Design strategy and methodology |

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Goals and objectives

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The project framework

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The assemblage

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The activation

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The projection

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The constellations meshwork

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The streets as we see it | Citizen’s archive |

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Borrowed from Time | Collection of Artifacts |

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Reclaiming Our Urban | Activism Mapping |

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Knitting the collective | Mapping Anarkali |

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Revisiting the published world | Media Mapping |

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Conclusion Bibliography

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keywords and terminologies bazaar: is a small marketplace, a space of exchange and commerce found commonly in south-east asia grassroots commotion: is the localized array of activities attributed to the residents. urban narrative: The transforming state of the urban identity of a place.

point of urban impact: The moment in time and space where the urban carrier interacts with the urban cloud and creates a new form of transformation effect urban indulgence: This is the state of outcome from the points of impacts that create a change in the urban narrative. chaye: Local Pakistani tea. dhaaba: A small shack for selling food items.

urban components: The parts of the urban fabrics that allow the culture and identity of the place to be manifested and experienced.

qissa khawani: The tradition of storytelling.

urban carriers: The mediums that help transform the urban components to the clouds of urban ideologies

halwa puri: a traditional form of breakfast in lahore

moments of precipitation: The instances that allow the urban components to mature in their processes and become crystallized in time and space and also become visible enough to be extracted

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nashta culture: breakfast culture in lahore

CHAPTER 1 Situating the urban narrative the neo-colonization of the globalizing south

1947, millions of families cross the border, among clashes and riots, a landscape of diaspora awaits them. The colonizers have left but their presence is felt more than ever as the people try to piece together the complex set of relationships left behind. Fast forward to October 2015, the construction of Pakistan’s first metro train project, sponsored by Exim (Export-Import) Bank of China, starts in the city of Lahore. 15.8 out of the 16.8 miles of the track is elevated and has been imposed on to the historic morphology of the city of Lahore. Passing through the oldest parts of the city with the highest population densities, the construction of the train sparks protest and debate over the chosen route, as fear of displacement of people and destruction of historic and religious sites starts becoming a reality.

According to Pakistani news channels covering the Orange Metro Line Train (OLT), 110 families were displaced due to the construction. Maryam

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Hussain, an activist, working in the neighborhood of Anarkali, the densest area along the track, would argue that the number of displaced families is around a 100,000. The colonizer have once again infiltrated the geography of this area, this time the terms of engagement are more rigid and bound by a loan that is designed to default.

This OLT is a part of a larger regional plan of improving the state of infrastructure and energy production to facilitate trade in this region. One belt one road (OBOR), is a $124 billion1 foreign investment by the Chinese government to reinstate the historical Silk Road. This project will connect China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. The plan to improve connectivity between these countries for economic growth in the regions has been seen by researchers as a strategic move for China to increase its political clout in the region.2 In the last 20 years, there has been a paradigmatic shift in China’s foreign policy.

According to a New York Times article3 in 2000’s only five countries in the world counted China as their major trading partner whereas today the

number has increased to more than a 100. The study of these trade investments in developing countries has a common underlying narrative which seems to continue with the OBOR initiative.

In the case of Namibia, Africa, for instance, their relation with the Chinese government had complex roots in black social movements, as they supported the black nationational’s liberation struggle. This involvement eventually paved their entrance into the Namibian economy, with their non-paternalistic and unconditional investments unlike the existing western alternatives. Today, Chinese companies have businesses all over Namibia alongside a large portfolio of infrastructure projects that were carried out with the help of Chinese workers, and control of natural resources like Uranium.

These developments can be seen as economic growth to some but the debate about ‘for whom’ remains under discussion.

The investments were carried out through loans issued by Chinese banks and have saddled the4 economy with debt, while the unemployment rate has remained consistent. The non-payment of these loans, which is likely in struggling economies will lead to takeover of the countries

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assets by Chinese counterparts. This debt-trap political strategy has presented itself recently in Sri Lanka, where the control of the Hambantota Port was handed over to China, after the failure of Sri Lankan government to pay off the loan5. This port will prove to be a major acquisition for the OBOR initiative.

The British imperial powers adopted a similar strategy when they came to Southeast Asia in hopes of trading in the 18th century. The declining state of Mughal empire produced the terrain vague in the political realm for the East India Company, owned first by the English and then by the British, to intervene, and later colonize the sub-continent. China, today, is seen by many to replicating that model of establishing itself as a regional power in Asia.

Neo-colonization, came about in the late 20th century, to describe the modern day imperialistic relations of the developed countries with developing ones. 6 China today is seen to be imitating this model of extracting resources from developing countries by initiating trade relations with them and then gaining control over local assets as a part of the economic exchange. The

added layer of complexity in these exchanges is that the projects completed under these agreements can only be completed with the capital offered by the developed countries as is the case of Pakistan in CPEC. So while the city of Lahore was in dire need of a mass transit system since the 1990’s it’s construction was only made possible through the funding received by the China. And in this engagement of unequal strengths, the one with the more economic power will always have the last say, as history has shown us in the case of the British Imperial powers. politics of Infrastructure In today’s world, infrastructure, has gone from being the mere physical representation of the supporting structures of the city, to a complex set of invisible relations of the political and social realm. Fran Tonkiss in her book Cities by Design: The social life of Urban Form, offers us socio political lenses to view the changing role of infrastructure in our world today:

‘The political economy of infrastructure involves a highly variable mix of public and private capital, ownership and delivery structures, regulation and

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its absence. It offers both an historical model of state control – with all its fragmentations and devolutions – and a contemporary model of vagaries of ‘privatization’ – the various investment streams and financing mechanisms, governance arrangements and regulatory fixes that, the term covers and often times obscures. ‘ In April 2015, Chinese President Xi Jingping visited Islamabad to inaugurate the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $46 billion investment in Pakistan’s energy and transportation as a part of the OBOR7. This foreign investment into Pakistan will be largest form of direct investment since the 1970’s and is expected to bring 700,000 jobs by 20308.

The financing structures employed to instate formal infrastructure in global trade agreements are often precarious and layered through multiple channels which make them a popular strategy for corruption by political entities in developing countries. In Pakistan for instance, the current ruling party in the federal government, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), popular for their infrastructure development projects, have used construction of highways and improvement of

physical infrastructure in the city of Lahore as their political campaigning tool since the 1990’s9.

Their clientelistic political legacy, commonly known, has employed and favored their own relations in these large scale developments.

to benefit their own. Politics of infrastructure, therefore is an essential part of the city scape, as exploitative interests engulf the multi layered processes that inculcate the physicality of this infrastructure in to the city.

Recently, PML-N has been facing serious criticism and negative publicity due to the removal of their party president, Nawaz Sharif, from premiership of the country and his party designation, on corruption charges. Nawaz Sharif’s family appeared in the infamous Panama gate papers for having offshore companies and assets beyond their means and after going through a special investigation was declared unfit to rule the country. This case has brought attention to the CPEC and the finance mechanisms used to construct the Orange Metro Line, as suspicions arise that the public money has been misused by their political office, especially in the case of land acquisitions and land compensations.

socialist governments to private-public partnerships: An overview of the political climate

In developing countries, the fractured structures of accountability and culture of corruption enables individuals and profit seeking enterprises to extract resources from the public good and use it

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Frequently changing governments layered with the frequently changing social and economic paradigms with each following rule, Pakistan’s political structure reeks of stratified policies and incoherencies attributed to its tumultuous history.

In 71 years of its history, there have been three military coups followed by martial law governments and at least two known unsuccessful attempts at overthrowing democratically elected governments10, one socialist government that nationationalized all the public institutions in 1970s, followed by ‘free market economy’ oriented government that privatized all the public institutions in 1980’s.

These ruptured political histories are a foreground to the current political ecology in which the OLT is placing itself and in order to understand the

relationship of this project to its environment we have to trace the trajectories of the historical episodes intersecting with it today.

Migration is a theme deeply rooted in the narrative of the OLT, as the population and ownership of the land along the route are linked to the tragic events of the diaspora of 1947. According to

Divided Cities: Partition and Its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar by Ian Talbot at the time of partition nearly 400,000 Muslims migrated from Amritsar (the nearest big city on the Indian side of the border). By viewing the map of Lahore and the peripheries of the urban morphology during that era, we can see that most of this population was absorbed into the walled city and surrounding smaller localities, Anarkali, Cantonment and residential areas along the mall where the properties that were left behind by the Hindu and Sikh or the British in case of the cantonments.

Families who occupied these deserted properties from that time period still continue to live in those areas, three-four generations later. In some cases these people have no property papers or legal claim over the land they have been occupying as the need for doing so did not arise until quite

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| Figure 1 Map of Lahore 1935 |

recently when these development projects initiated by the government started acquiring land in the area and the ownership became a contested issue.

Another major perpetrator in this narrative is the military and their interference in politics, which is often attributed to the corrupt state of politics in the country. The significant episodes that came about the three military regimes are the mobility of the labor force in village due to green revolution, movement of wealth from rural centers to the urban, political manipulation and role as the silent third force and finally the security situation with war in terrorism.

Ayub Khan, the first martial law administrator, introduced the green revolution in the 1960’s11 bringing with it great wealth to the rural economy.

This newly acquired capital also brought a surge in the rural to urban migration, as the framers sought to improve their lifestyles. The flipside of this improvement in economy was the stratification of farmers with mechanized tools versus farmers employing manual labour, as the later did not benefit from the boom.12 These unemployed farmers also headed to the city

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looking for jobs. Lahore being the most urbanized city in its surrounding is a constant magnet to the rural population looking for better opportunities and since the 1960’s it has housed this constantly changing workforce that moves between the urban and the rural. These people settle usually in the low income areas with informal structures of occupation. Their presence in the city is crucial to the local economy structures that make Lahore a vibrant economic center for informal markets but socially, issues like lack of ownership and alienation from investing in local community presents itself as they dissociate themselves from being identified as Lahoris.

The second significant military rule that had a long lasting impact on the socio-economic landscape of Pakistan is the period of 1980’s when Zia-ulHaq came into power after over -throwing the democratically elected Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Zia-ulHaq’s infamous Islamization policies had two purposes, one was to counter Bhutto’s popularity and the second was to please the U.S, as jihadis were trained in Pakistan to fight off the Soviets in Afghanistan. The U.S during this period sent a great amount of aid to support the jihadis. The martial law administrator used this money to

strengthen the military and infiltrate its power into other spheres of the governance structure. He appointed many high-ranking officers to government posts and increased the armed forces salaries. Zia was also responsible for bringing the ‘free market economy’ to the country and boasting the role of private entities in Pakistan as he privatized all the public sector institutions that were nationalized under Bhutto13.

His legacy deeply entrenched the role of the military in the politics of Pakistan and the Islamization laws destroyed the social fabric of the country as radical religious splinter groups started appearing.

The democratically elected governments on the other hand did not perform any better than the military ones. Misuse of office power, incompetency, strained relationships with the military and lack of accountability have been major issues with these governments. According to a survey done in 2009 by the National Accountability Bureau, ‘lack of accountability’ is perceived by the general public as the major reason for the increasing corruption14.The democratic governments, starting from early 1990’s to the current rule of PML-N, have all been

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tainted with cases of corruption and misuse of public funds. The current premiere is the first example in the history of Pakistan to be removed from the office due to corruption charges. The scale of fraudulent transfer of money is highest in development projects and procurement (including defense and public sector corporations) and the bank loan write offs15. In the last decade there are has been a major investment into privatization of public goods i.e. mass transit systems and public service companies. Providing a certain class of individuals in the society more access to capital and opportunity for corruption in the public realm.

The paradox in this situation is that corruption in the public sector started in the 1970’s when Bhutto under his socialist regime nationalized all public goods alongside the banking system. The government at that time was not equipped to deal with this large scale nationalization program, hence, it created a huge set of opportunities for individuals to misuse their offices for private interests. As the preceding governments shifted the focus from socialist system to ‘free market economies’ in the 1980’s and onto the private companies, a new class of politician with businesses and industries, became a part of the government system. For instance, Nawaz Sharif,

the ex-prime minister of Pakistan, owns Ittehad Steel Mills, one of the largest steel mills company in Pakistan, his family is also allegedly behind Habib Construction Company which has been awarded the construction work for the OLT project16.

Since its formation, Pakistan has seen only two democratically elected governments completing their time in the office. The constantly changing political climate in the country has ruptured the socio economic conditions of the society in Pakistan. Issues pertaining to the social welfare of the citizens have been largely ignored as the survival of the party in the office takes priority.

The infrastructure required to keep pace with the pace at which the cities are growing is not met, as the deficits in the budgets grow.

In this scenario, globalization and the free market economy has produced a complex set of dynamics intersections where the underdeveloped countries like Pakistan are acquiring non-paternalistic loans from countries like China on commercial basis to fulfil the infrastructure gaps left in the economy due to the economic strains. The development of these

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infrastructure projects are often awarded to private companies, often related to, or owned by individuals in the government. The public money in then channeled throw these streams into the hands of a few, while the public at large remains indebted, with increased taxes and diminished subsidies. This ecology of public-private funding is the backdrop to our narrative of the OLT and represents the complex set of relations that are created with such the introduction of these large scale projects funded by foreign loans. the contradictory imaginaries reshaping the city of lahore

“Urban imaginaries are the symbolic sphere in which space and places are contested. They project unconscious social desires and construct imaginary social alternatives which form part of a long utopian tradition.�17 Not only do these urban imaginaries weave into the physical construct of the city validating the unspoken narratives but are also seen resonating through culture of the post-colonial cities of South Asia. Lahore, a city in the process of reimaging its identity as a global city while being shackled in

the imaginaries of its yester years as a Mughal era capital and later becoming a colonized city under the British.

Vijayanti Rao in her article “Embracing Urbanism: The City as Archive” expresses the growing interest from the fields of social sciences and anthropology (particularly in the case of the global south) in the study of the city itself as it ‘exposes

the fundamental political geography of disciplinary epistemology, which brings into view class relations as well as relations of colonization’ The

colonial rule major infrastructural changes led to a change in the city’s existing character as a rich cultural center to that of one with flourishing economic center. A huge network of roads were laid down and alongside a rail network connecting city and movement of artillery that increased the pace of developmental changes reshaping the city.

From the British until the 1990’s the city has seen a south-east expansion towards from its historic walled city structure as seen in the map below.

city is the manifestation of diverse ideologies and cultures, which agglomerate and present themselves most prominently in city planning and architecture. The built form then becomes a visual repository of different processes that sustain the city over a time period.

A theme that recurs prominently in this regard for Lahore as a city is the segregation of classes through division in land, most notably in the residential zones. These stratifying urban imaginaries have to be comprehended through multiple political paradigms. This region was the capital of the state of Punjab in the Mughal Era and later became a colonized city. Under the

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These expansions have been in form of sub-urban residential units that act as a magnet for other services to move along with them. As the population increases the city expands itself,

reiterating its economic centers with the growing expansion. Currently the population is growing at the rate of 3%, with the current count being a little over 8 million. This huge influx of residents can be attributed to rural-urban migration as the province of Punjab concentrates its capital investment projects in the city of Lahore.

In the last 14 years the physical size of the city has almost doubled18, creating a huge set of administrative and congestion issues, rooted in the housing shortage issues and unsanitary public health facilities. The spread of the city has made it difficult for a singular public transportation system to connect the different parts of the city as well as creating divides in the residential areas in terms of the economic.

This boom experienced in Lahore today with the investments coming in from multiple global players, each trying to instill their soft power in the soil with development projects. Recently Lahore received funding from the Turkey in 2011 to develop a bus rapid transport system and nowadays it is developing its first mass transit train system with the help of China. These investments have been strategically planned to

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further the political aspirations of the countries investing in them.

A city that was once known for its gardens, hustle bustle of its narrow streets lined with informal bazaars and an array of local vendors selling food delicacies is facing a rapidly changing landscape. The winding narrow road, with vertical house closely linked together are being cleared out to make way for the shopping malls and infrastructure that will put enable it to compete with global standards of a modern city.

CHAPTER 2

thesis process: from the global perspective to the neighborhood Our process began with an incumbent feeling to probe into the quickly urbanizing city of Lahore.

The lived experience of the city was drastically changing and the fears of losing the city’s long held character and charm provoked us to understand the processes that were leading to this frenzied envisioning of the city. Our research began by focusing on to the large scale projects that were being carried out by the government of Punjab, either in the construction or in the proposal stages, and tried to understand the need for having those projects by the city and the residents, while also analyzing the socioeconomic impacts of these projects.

Our analysis lead us to the largest of these projects, The Orange Metro Line, Lahore’s first rapid transit system, funded by Exim Bank China as mentioned earlier. This project will have the greatest impact in the socio economic structure of the city.

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Since its announcement the civil society members and activists have mobilized the residents on numerous occasions starting from the announcement of this project in December 2014.

A petition filed by a civil society activist, Kamil Khan Mumtaz, against the Punjab Government (provincial government), on grounds of violating the Antiquities Act of 1975, which prohibits construction within 200 feet of heritage sites, managed to halt the construction of project till September 2017. But despite relentless efforts by various social organizations, the project is still progressing towards its completion.

This project was preceded by a Rapid Mass Bus project in Lahore and once completed, will be followed by 4 mile long, 6 lane elevated expressway to improve traffic at the entrance point in Lahore through River Ravi. The current political ruling party of Punjab, Pakistan’ Muslim League (N), has been the source of a lot of criticism from the civil society for mishandling of public funds in the name of development of these infrastructure projects.

While we researched about the low income displacements caused by the project and the small scale resistances that were spurring up against the construction, our investigation led us to issues of land acquisition and the funding mechanisms being employed for this project.

Which eventually brought us to a point where addressing the global funding dynamics became imperative for us. Our research took multiple tangents form here, understanding the the Pakistan-China relation, the political aspirations of China to increase its power monopoly in Asia, theorizing neo-colonialism and understanding the history of China’s investments with respect to infrastructure in different developing countries.

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These global narratives and their role in creating disruptions in the fabric of cities like Lahore were thoroughly discussed in literature and the lines of engagement between the different entities started becoming clearer to us. The only aspect missing from the plethora of information found on these subjects was that of the communities, whose social and economic relations were being constantly redefined and disturbed by the changing landscape. We studied the population densities and the different income groups situated along the route and identified certain perimeters with the limited data that was available to narrow our research to Anarkali Bazaar. analysis leading to anarkali We created a map of the population densities of Lahore in order to understand the vulnerable areas of the city. The darkest region showing the highest density, 7400 people per square kilometer. These regions also correspond to the for lowest income areas in the city.

Next we over laid the road networks from the year 1984 with the year 2015 to understand the

urbanization patterns linked with the built environment of the city. As can be seen in the map most of the road expansion or improvements have been done in the areas with the higher level of densities and lower income levels. The concentration of the public networks are concentrated in those areas.

We added the orange metro line to this map with its range of influence which was calculated using the reports of displacements along the route. The metro, as can be seen from the map, passes through the densest part of the city. This map probed us to look further into these neighborhoods and focus our research to a single neighborhood for a deeper analysis.

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The data for healthcare facilities showed the intensity of private healthcare facilities around the newly developed road network, showing the pattern for commercialization that follows the investment into infrastructure. Another important point to notice is the relatively larger presence of public health care facilities in the sub-urban low density areas in the periphery of the city.

The final part of our conclusion came from inserting the four routes of mass transportation systems that were planned by the city government with the health care facilities and inserting within these the incidents that were reported by Maryam Hussain, an activist, of displacements.

had to understand the commotion that was keeping this neighborhood alive even after repeated attempts by the government to redraw its social and physical morphology.

We initiated informal conservations with the people of the neighborhood, photographed the bazaar and made videos to capture the fleeting moments of life spurring in it. One of our aim was identify the spaces and places that brought the people together and to identify linkages between the different elements that created the different relationships within the urban realm.

This analysis led us converge our investigations to Anarkali, which was in the most vulnerable state according to the perimeters we set. field work - visiting anarkali

From our fieldwork we were successful in identifying the culture carriers that held the community together. Our conversations enabled us to understand the point of view of the people and what the neighborhood meant to them.

During the summer of 2017, we visited the bazaar of Anarkali to understand the current situation of the neighborhood while also familiarizing ourselves with the ecology of the once glorious neighborhood of Lahore. Our site visits were divided in different segments of the day and week, we wanted to immerse ourselves in the hustle bustle of the bazaars in the limited time we

Although we were able to meet most of our goals for the site visits planned but in retrospective we think our research would have been further enriched if our time period for visiting Lahore could have been extended. We planned a few activities with the residents in the form of a workshop that couldn’t suffice due to the limited availability of time and resources.

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the formal Interviews

Usman Sami (M.S Conservation of Cultural Heritage) Assistant Professor at Department of Architecture, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore Usman Sami is an academic and has been a part of conservation of historical landmarks in the city.

His previous teaching position was at the National College of Arts, Lahore. The university neighbors the bazaar of Anarkali and is a favored location for the faculty and students to hangout due to the food. He was interviewed due to his extensive knowledge of Anarkali and understanding of culture of the area.

He instructed us to understand culture by understanding the morphology, which had already been in consideration in our site visits but was further emphasized by his acknowledgement. The major takeaway from the conversation that we had with him was the idea that the identity of the neighborhood is not a stagnant element, it is constantly being reiterated by the residents’ themselves. In his opinion it was the unnatural

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scale and pace at which these development occurred that was problematic. Our ideas of coproducing the identity stem from this conversation as we understand the problematic approach of romanticizing with the past to the point of disregarding the now completely.

Aysha Raja Lawyer-Activist.

Owner of The Last Word bookshop There has been a growing culture of bookshops in Lahore. Similar to the culture of the Tea Houses, after the partition in 1947, these spaces are slowly becoming spaces where people engage in dialogue and discussions on issues of the city.

Our engagement with Aysha Raja started with the idea of organizing a workshop on the critical cartography at her bookshop as a way of starting the debate about creating resistance through documenting neighborhoods. Due to a few logistical issues the workshop could not be organized but we ended up having a conversation with her about the ongoing issues of the city.

She talked about her own experiences of resisting and protesting for these ongoing issues and according to her acquiring the anti-government role had not been fruitful. Her own conclusion of moving forward with such large scale projects was to create a network from the bottoms up to resist them. She talked about creating community leaders and bringing people together under one space, in order to create a united forum for debating and creating inclusive narratives which is something she is attempting to do with her book shop in Lahore.

Ahmed Lashari Advisor to Chinese companies on Taxation (China-Pak Economic Corridor) Retired Civil Services Officer He is an advisor with the Chinese companies investing in Pakistan and the conversation with him gave us the counter view of the narrative we were trying to build. Ahmed Lashari’s extensive experience as a civil service officer places him in the good viewpoint of how the government agencies engage with the different actors in such projects. In his opinion the CPEC would be great project for the underdeveloped and often ignored

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areas of Balochistan Province, where the trade route that connects China to all these different countries is going to pass through. He did agree with us on the idea that the Orange Metro Line was an unnecessary project, in terms of the capital that was being poured into it and also with respect to its route. In his opinion, having worked with the government officials for most of his life, The Orange Metro Line was a case of increasing the venues in which a certain class of politicians could commit corruption. As in his opinion infrastructure projects offered a greater possibility for people in government to channel funds for their own benefits.

The conversation with him offered us the dialectical relationship of the CPEC with Pakistan and how the complexities of these relations cannot be seen in a black and white relation. local case-studies of community engagement: orangi pilot project In order to draw parallels between our academic understanding of community organization and what that means in the Pakistani context, we studied The Orangi Pilot Project, one of the most

successful attempts community organization by Arif Hassan’s foundation. Orangi is an informal settlement in Karachi that had long been ignored by the city government. The community with the help of Arif Hassan’s foundation developed a whole plan to install a sewage system in their neighborhood along with improving the general infrastructure that had dilapidated due to disinvestment.

One of the key aspects of this case study that informed our design decisions was the way the foundation organized the people of the community to take ownership of their issues. The foundation brought in the expertise to help educate the people about how to install the missing infrastructural elements. The labor and the finance came from the community itself and hence making them a part of the actual process.

This project further diversified into other projects initiated by the foundation after the success of the first one. Our model of community engagement is majorly informed by this study, as it plays into the same cultural context that our site has.

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CHAPTER 3 premise and rationalization of design Introduction The problematic scape of the scenario inculcated in Pakistan originates from the global strings that have pulled on the resources of the country and driven out capitalized advantages for their own expansions. This slowly transcends itself into the realities of the national dilemmas of the political confusion induced by very personalized agendas of individuals in the decision making processes that have steered Pakistan’s urban policies into irrelevant tangents.

The situational juxtaposition of the elements of change including the national neo-liberal policies and the neo colonization projects like the ChinaPak Economic Corridor from the global powerhouse China has fabricated the urban scape of Pakistan today. S. Akbar Zaidi, a political economy expert stated that Pakistan is stepping into a deal which will turn it into a colony of China and undermine its sovereignty, according to a report by The Economic Times.19 Tracing these

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strings to the municipal level of Lahore the urban context unfolds itself slowly into a form of handicapped future.

To imagine this concept in more depth the collective grouping of these external influences, the internal politics discussed in the previous chapters and the real voice of the people of Lahore, we can layout an imaginary of an urban diagram that deciphers this colloquial idea into a pragmatic illustration of a wrapped situational analysis. This diagram was used as the framework to base the premise of the thesis problematization and also reiterated to decipher the rationales of the proposal. The layering of the influence on the urban landscape of Lahore arranges itself in the condensation of an urban cloud as seen in the representation below. The urban narrative gets projected through these cloud formulations rather than through stories and experiences of its people. Mark C. Child contributes to this discussion of seeking stories in order to generate an urban landscape of thoughts and dreams rather than a narrative fabricated synthesis originating from the urban cloud.20 This article examines the discrepancies of the urban situation that instills the conceptualization of understanding

the place as stories. Here the diagram unfolds the stories of its people in a formation of a commotion on the grassroots that operates to generate a parallel reality of its own.

the urban narrative cloud Situating this thematic to the specific context of Lahore an array of historical influences starts to pave the pictorial representation of Lahore.21 This cloud contains these realities and exacerbates the problematics of the coming future. The global influences, the national agendas, the political situation all become primary influencers of guiding the wind for this cloud and thus guiding the

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imprint of its projection over the city. Lahore today stands at the forefront of being claimed.

This claim today is stringed to the prescription of global investment flowing in the city. These urban dependencies have entered the city of lahore on their own terms in the form of The China Pakistan Economic Corridor is an ambitious long-term Chinese investment of USD 62 billion in the country’s infrastructure & energy sector development, the total cost of which is expected to cross USD 100 bn mark by 2030.22 One of the projects, the Orange Metro Line, is a sequel to the Green Line metro bus service in Lahore, with a total estimated project cost of USD 1.6 billion. 23 China’s massive capital inflow and rising influence demands the outlook of a pre-decided landscape of the glorious mega city that is representative of the stamp of China’s foreign urban landscape.

The cloud here formulates the narrative of Lahore to be the shiny glossy veneer over its people’s realities, overlaid with the depiction of the fast lane bridges, the steel cladded metro lines and the glass shaped skyscrapers. The existence of this formation is not permeable by the surrounding air which makes it non inclusive and completely self-driven.

The cloud silently rejects and loudly dictates Lahore of what its identity is. The government authorities including the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and local political atmosphere in Lahore today stand in the parallel reality to this global interest that seem to benefit their personal businesses growth. The Punjab’s power house national party, PML (n) backed by its industrial steel mills, Ittefaq Foundry, controls most of the tenders for the development projects in their flag bearing city Lahore.24 Recladding the roads of Lahore again and again through these infrastructural interventions, the PML (n) has been projecting the cloud of the urban narrative to carry the name of this neo-liberalization in developing the city’s mass transit and development projects for decades. The mediating spaces of these cracked outlooks have been filled in by the faces of corruption in the political arena, security unrest through multiple ongoing conflicts and poor local municipal management. It is very significant to understand that the cloud has been absorbing these inputs and assimilating them into a resulting descriptive of Lahore that lacks the face of its people. It contains more cement, steel and interest loan rates than the values and culture of the people of Lahore. The diagram below

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summarizes the narratives of the cloud and their influencing components. the commotion of the grassroots This dichotomy brings us to the flip side of the city today, the realizations of its people: the commotion. The term commotion here signifies the dynamic buzzing of the people’s narratives on the grassroots that is constantly evolving itself according to the daily experiences of the citizens.

The idea of place making becomes significant in understanding the terminology defined above.

Hector Fernando Burga has defined the parameters of the complexity in the practice of place making by using the examples of people narratives and citizen participation (Burga, 2008).25 This ideology forms the basis of laying the foundations of the commotion in Lahore that exist simultaneously irrespective of what the cloud is depicting the city to be. It carries the richness and patina of time and space of what Lahore has been according to the layering of the stories that the people tell. These stories get reinstated in various forms of citizen interactions with the city of Lahore in the medium above by the power of

weak

ties collective.26

and

becomes

the

commotion’s

The push of this commotion above the ground level sometimes emits in the form of the precipitation of these realities. The most important aspect of this collective is that it holds the true narrative of its people and their connections with one another. Here the indicators are defined to develop a system of recognition for the commotion; the identity and attachment of citizens with spaces, establishment of community ties and extraction of local resources, which are used as the key for validating the authenticity of the commotion and the citizen’s narrative of the city. the site: anarkali, lahore Placing the defined space of the commotion of Lahore into the circumstances today converges into the site work of study and analysis. Taking this atmospheric study of the urban cloud of the forced narratives and the commotion of the

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grassroots, Lahore was analyzed for a site where the urban grassroots are in their most active form of precipitation. Taking the premise of problematization and leads defined above in Chapter 2, Anarkali stands at the most critical point in time and space. The over layering of the development projects condensed around the buffered area of Anarkali including the Metro Bus system, infrastructural city-led projects, the crossover of The Green Line, the Orange Line, The Blue Line and The Purple Line, has caused Anarkali to stem out at the most vulnerable site at the mercy of the urban cloud’s projected image of a mega city. The introduction of these development projects have stirred the place and caused major reportings of destruction of the community’s weak ties27. Simultaneously the cross analysis of the health care facilities and the high population density areas shows major deficit sites as marked. The map overlays these situations together in a form of a visual representation in order to identity the most critical site of intervention.

themselves in their collective formations over the years. Using the indicators defined in the premise of the analysis these filtered components of the commotion were laid out to be studied and deciphered. the commotion in anarkali

This discussion highlights the need for an intervention in Anarkali to combat the urban cloud narrative. On the other hand Anarkali paints a very intrinsic picture of history, culture and local knowledge that exists as an effervescing vessel of a constantly moving narrative. The place is primarily defined by its identity of multiple bazaars and their attached user interactive niches. The proximity to all the precipitating moments of the defined commotion shows a possibility of activation in the space of Anarkali. Some of these activities and cultural manifestations of identity are defined in the following sections. The analysis of this commotion here precipitates into various components which have been able to sustain

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In this section, the analysis of the commotion within Anarkali was done to expose the details of the commotion and its relevance. Using this analysis the following meso space of interaction between the cloud and the commotion in Anarkali was laid out.

Anarkali comes forward as one of the oldest open bazaars of South Asia dating back 200 years with enriched layering of culture through time and space. Known for its multifaceted commercial specialties including food, books and crafts, Anarkali carries a derivative form of identity stemmed from the chronicles of its people and spaces. The name of this marketplace itself is assumed to stem from a tail of romanticized tragedy of the love chronicle between the Mughal prince Salim and a courtesan Anarkali.28 The significance of this place starts from this name

and then gets overlaid by its placement in history.

Anarkali sits right on the periphery of the Walled city of Lahore and the Lahore Fort, signifying one of the initial commercial expansions of Lahore outside the walled city.29 This proximity makes the existence of this bazaar crucial in the history of the development of the organic urban spaces of Lahore that grew independently outside the controlled administrative bounds30. This premise helps understand the general trend of the expansion of Lahore originating from this central point of the old walled city center outwards to the south eastern periphery.31 The map below highlights this expansion in the parameters of Lahore.

Over the years Anarkali became the hub of the activities of commerce and celebration, and started expanding its consumer outreach wherever the city was expanding. The diversity of the market goods added to the vitality of this space in its urban identity formation. The commotion exceeded its precipitating qualities and started yielding energetic resources of cultural representations through the voices of its people who had also escaped the control of the

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bounded city parameters and entered the age of Lahore’s glory.

Here it becomes critical to understand the role of Anarkali in containing and sustaining the commotion that originated at the heart of the city and slowly paved its way to become a consequential monument and integral to Lahore’s colloquial title; ‘the city of the alive souls’32. It is because of this sustenance that Anarkali became the stepping stone of the urban exposition of the commotion. This is how the space developed into becoming a sanctuary for the rebellious, a nursery for the nascent commotion to grow and develop in the forms of identity, community ties and local resources.

The bazaar itself exists as a motley assortment of stacked shops and small living quarters all densely mixed amidst this fervent air of commerce. The market has been layered over time with various specialties and reiterated its existence into forming two spaces, the Old Anarkali bazaar and the New Anarkali bazaar, both carrying specialized markets within themselves including Food Street, Bano Bazaar, Dhoni Ram Lane, Urdu Bazaar, Paan Gali. This glorious meshwork of sorts has been transformative in developing its own subculture that becomes the resource of the urban commotion mentioned above. The power of the collective has been able to transcend through time and space that has given anarkali its identity.

To understand the manifestation of this subculture and its ecology of production there is a need to identify the specific micro areas where the people’s narratives are most loudly created and heard: the commotion of the grassroots in Anarkali.

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food culture One of the main identities of the Anarkali bazaar comes from its attachment to the popular Lahori food culture. In fact, the iconic bazaar is the birthplace of many palatable entrees popularized in the Pakistani cuisine. The main artery of the bazaar is known as the Food Street which is characterized by open kitchen restaurants lining both sides of a narrow street. The ringing sounds of culture and activity of this place begins a little after dawn when the locals gather around the restaurants to begin their day with the staple Lahori breakfast, Halwa Puri.

As the day proceeds, this food bazaar continues to serve its customers with local assortments. This part of the bazaar is said to have been functional since the mid 1800’s. It received a surge in its activities when the government funded its rehabilitation in 2002.

Outdoor street eateries and informal food hawkers are a crucial part of the identity of the culture of this space. Upon looking closely this culture can be further classified into various typologies.

Nashta (breakfast) culture for instance is a popular form of one of the ways the locals gather at the

break of the dawn around the corner of the food street in Anarkali to enjoy the local food. This thriving Nashta culture houses famous eating places that have been running through centuries now as family business, that attract people from all around the city. The people of Lahore partake in conversation on mundane topics of day to day life, as well as discourse on subjects as varied as philosophy, politics, and art over meals. Informal tete-a-tete is so integral to the ritual of food consumption in the Lahori culture that these organic conversations and story-telling sessions have shaped thoughts, ideas, and narratives of the people of Lahore.

The important aspect about this is the extraction of the space from this bazaar that is constantly producing the food culture of not just this neighborhood but of all of Lahore. It exists as a complicated yet extremely vital ecology that upholds the identity of the citizens of Lahore. It is significant to understand the meaning of the food culture beyond the popular practice and be able to see it as a micro ecosystem containing conversations, stories, local knowledge and economic ties.

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the chaaye culture "The first time you share tea with a Balti (Northern

Pakistani tribe), you are a stranger. The second time you share tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family."

Greg Mortenson an American mountaineer and educator very aptly states about the tea culture in Pakistan in his book Three Cups of Tea.33 Chaaye is a necessity in the social structure of Pakistani communities. This idea gets spatialized in Anarkali through various tea stalls and dhaabas all around the bazaar. The importance of this tea culture is the way this act has become socialized and politicized for uplifting its identity of the citizen commotion. One such evident example is the famous Pak Tea House. This tea specializing unit used to attract the left wing intellectuals and artist from the 1950’s to gather and debate about the newly formed state of Pakistan.34 Literary conversations about the political systems and the social scapes originated in the enthusiasts and thinkers over cups of hot tea. While the city was projecting its imaginary on its own terms, the citizens were congregating in spaces like the Pak Tea House to knit their own derivatives of the

identity of Lahore. This unit was shortly closed down in 2000 when it ran out of business but was immediately taken up by the government as a space of local heritage worth saving and renovated; Pak Tea House resumed operations in 2013 with funding from the Punjab Government.

Anarkali’s proximity to this very significant place and its inclusion in the Chaaye dhaaba culture makes it involved in the debate on tea and its role in steering the commotion of the people. the sunday book bazaar Since 1960’s, every Sunday the service road centered between old Anarkali and New Anarkali is flooded with books from book sellers all over the city. Famously known as the ‘Sunday Book Bazaar’ this informal book market for literary lovers is another component of the Anarkali bazaar that nourishes the rich literary culture of Lahore. The bazaar is a permanent (happens every Sunday) and yet temporary (informal structure) feature of the area. The book bazaar has been able to retain this informality in its structure despite the two attempts, once in 1997 and again in 2009, to formalize this street as

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‘book street’. Walking through the streets you will find pavements neatly decorated with classics from the western literature to the Persian poetry books to the latest Urdu literature. A burgeoning student’s community from the universities around Anarkali, National College of Arts, Punjab University, King Edward Medical College & Government College Lahore, are seen as regulars to this bazaar.

The literary collective of the idea of reading and gathering information becomes the premise to guide the recognition of this component as an active form of the citizen commotion in Anarkali.

This bazaar has been containing the local narratives and allowing them to thrive every Sunday for decades now. media and activism Social media and the Television culture have given the people of Pakistan a relatively open and safe space to share their stories with one another.

Over the years the judicial system and policing trend of Pakistan has been plagued by the seeds of corruption and unstable governments creating a fear and alienation among the residents for their

rights. One platform that has been used as the medium to translate the community initiatives into causes and then into action is electronic media; especially ever since the privatization of television networks in the country. This significantly opens the relationship of the activism that stems from the community and links it to the portal of electronic media that allows the citizen commotion to get precipitated into reality. The local resident of a neighborhood such as Anarkali uses the community ties within the social structure to firstly organize themselves for a situational cause, which then gets translated to the rest of the people through electronic and social media platforms. Recent incidents have shown that these tools have been effective in surfacing the unnoticed stories of the city to the point of getting attention from judiciary and local governments. One such incident was the call for justice for a rape case of a six year old girl named Zainab from a town on the outskirts of Lahore. 35 Media played the role of taking the conversations from the commotion through the meso space towards the urban narratives cloud to influence and steer the way it operated. Lahore was heard loud and clear through this portal. Anarkali similarly has been able to participate in its rights

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to the city using electronic and digital media various times including its movement against the destruction caused by the Orange Metro Line. The movement of saving the historical temple of Jain Mandir on the corner of the metro route in anarkali was initiated using media and local activism.

Despite the unfavoring final outcomes the people of anarkali briefly found a crack in the meso space above their commotion.36 The activism in the streets of anarkali has been led by Mariam Hussain, who is an educator and activist working for the communities being displaced by the Orange Metro Line. Mariam Hussain Started documenting her on-ground activities via Facebook (a popular social media site) thereby giving the locals a means to activate an alternate narrative to that of developing mega city. These examples show how the media and activism tie in together to bring in the commotion of the people of not just anarkali but of all of Lahore together in one cause. This tool can be used as the means to decipher the way the meso space between the urban cloud and the citizen commotion can be designed to mediate the precipitation.

the carriers The meso space between the urban cloud and the buzzing of the commotion from the people of Lahore is composed of connecting carriers that string the precipitation above the grassroots level.

The definition of this can be sought through understanding of the commotion itself. The carriers act as the pathways to direct the manifestation of the precipitants of the components of the commotion by allowing them to become ideas from acts. The project uses this definition to identify the local cultural carriers in the form of activities and spaces that have retained the essence of the commotion in the face of adversaries and attempts to draw connections and parallels between them. The carriers work to resonate the commotion through their process of assimilation.

The exhibit of these carriers can be seen through the transcending adaptation of the commotion.

For example the food culture from Anarkali’s food street can be linked to the new found popular food culture that tries to adapt the classical Lahori cuisine. Recently the popular food culture has started to use the themes of traditional folk

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reinforcing the ideas of the commotion in a form of phenomenon of the meso space. This has started to come up in dhaaba style eateries and popular Chaaye cafe’s all around Lahore. The incidence of this idea suggests that the food culture in the commotion has started to mature up and get transmitted into an effervescence that has started to occupy the rest of Lahore as thematic of practice. Another example of these carriers can be seen in the form of literature exhibits and festivals happening all around the city. The Lahore Literary Fest is another example of the ideas that have started to unify the components of the commotion from Anarkali. The weekly book bazaar for example is a raw form of the act of people to come together and experience literature in the temporal settings of the street of Anarkali.

Similarly these festivals and exhibits allow these acts to become an encapsulated carrier towards the urban cloud. Here the carriers operate as a processing medium which allows them to mature and align within one another.

The role of this project aims to directly tap into this space of the carriers and catalyze the processes that have started to take place simultaneously.

Chapter 4 Design strategy and methodology introduction The thesis project was initiated using the premise of the laid out problematic structure of Lahore summarized in the previous Chapter. Situating these contextualization the project began to find the core of the issues in the bigger context and then link them to a pragmatic setting of a site, in this case Anarkali. The approach to resolve the problems was deciphered using the theoretical underpinning of change processions. Ines Newman lays out a synthesis of the theory of change that is used to achieve social cohesion in his book ‘promoting social cohesion: Implications for policy and evaluation’.37 He quantifies a desired outcome of generating a social cohesion structure and builds the hypothesis through a formula of backtracking. These crucially fixated steps trace him back to the series of interventions needed to achieve the outcome. Using this theoretical base of the ideologies of change, a simplified structure of design thinking was laid out. Here the process was initiated using the

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destined outcome of a social inclusion for the people of Anarkali, Lahore. It is important to understand that the desired outcomes were laid out in a series of goals; immediate, short-term and long-term. The diagram below shows the chronologically phased outcomes in the coming years of intervention model of the thesis.

The plan formulates the thesis that will be used as a stepping stone to achieve the whole outcome goal. The rationalized series here allows the cushions needed to include the risks and repercussions of the plan layout. The project is divided into three main phases of design strategy which were used as a collective to map out the goals. goals and objectives Knitting the commotion of the people and the urban cloud through the mediating carriers, the immediate goal was to catalyze the process of precipitation and increase the frequency of these precipitating moments. The examples quoted in the previous chapter have started to show the parallels of their existence which means that the urgency of bringing them together as a collective

demands a common ground for them to be able to resonate with one another and with bigger audiences. Here the design probes to find multifaceted ways of creating an assembly of sorts that is able to collect, contain and then disseminate the commotion. The pragmatic way of saying this is that the collective of the examples of precipitation need to be documented and curated on one common shared space.

This opens the discussion for the next goal for the thesis series which is to bring the collectives of the commotion and link them to the carriers in the city’s meso space. This demands a partnership and co-production of knowledge that can help create a spatial attachment to the process. This phase was designed to situate the collectivity and activate its synthesis in spaces of attachment.

The partnerships and co-production were used as the tools to fulfill this stretch of the design strategy.

The long-term goal set on this theory was to be able to connect everything together and project it outwards in order to include citizen participation and to include the realities of the commotion in the urban cloud. This outlook was quantified by

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projecting the design to the future partnerships and policies that can carry the weight of the aims and translate them into a motion of change. This holistically qualifies as the base of the bigger narrative that will in the future aim to achieve these laid out objectives. The drawbacks of this methodology is the over rationalization of thought and the dependencies of each step that leads into the next one. This means that any limitation applied on one instance can multiply its effect into the forthcoming stone in the project. In order to combat this limitation the project was streamlined using the current precedents of studies and partnered along those lines. This meant that the possibilities of failure were somehow limited because of the current sustainability of these already existing structures of models. the project framework The project itself can be classified into three main composing phases, the assemblage, the activation and the projection. As the name signifies each phase originated through the process of rationalizing their need to achieve the above described milestones.

The assemblage The assemblage is an extracted collective of the various manifestations of the commotion of Anarkali. This means that the ongoing incidences of the precipitating activities or works are collected into a curated formula and contained in a common space. This common space becomes the resource for the future boil of the commotion and allows its effects to be multiplied as the procession goes on. The collective here is an online database that will contain five main composing units each rationalized based on the spatial analysis, the research data and the field work. These components will be curated and collected to form a collective of knowledge that will be amplifying their presence in time and space. The assemblage will also help to exhibit these components as resources to help energize one another and collect more.

The Activation The activation phase of the project gets knitted further from the assemblage using the short-term goals defined in the design strategy in the previous section. Here the collective works of the

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assemblage start to place themselves in the spatialized settings of the site. Occupying the spaces identified through the assemblage as well, the activation phase invites collaborative thematic to be introduced in Anarkali. The assemblage acts as a tool to get more involvement of the locals into the idea of co-producing. Tracing the managerial problems in the process of coproduction in Pakistan, the activation phase was designed to reach self-sustainability in its model and also inculcate partnerships with existing structures.38 The activation phase relies on the phenomenon of partnerships between the local knowledge production and experts in the fields which can be translated into various forms of activities. Some examples of these activities include exhibits, pop-up events and local informal gatherings that will help to achieve a common sharing of thoughts and conversations. The main aim is to be able to gather the authenticity of the voice of the people in the commotion and start to clap them together to make it louder and more frequent in the site of Anarkali.

the projection The projection phase takes all of the preceding active strategies from Anarkali and builds its effects on the macro scale of the city of Lahore.

This projection phase places the strategies together in the form of the active yielding results that can be used to knit that goal together. The goals and the outcomes here become the main source of the derivation of this process. The assemblage and the activation phase inform the way the projection of their combined effect will navigate through the streets of anarkali and then transcend into Lahore. This brings back the three indicators of the design analysis again into the frameworks of the strategy; the identity, the community ties and the local resources which become the primary magnets to guide the flow of the projection. Any form of discrepancies here were tackled by backtracking and maintaining the goals back to the preceding phases in their laid out order. The projection phase also takes into account the policies that it can tackle, adapt or reiterate in order to create the future of anarkali resonate with its people.

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All of the products were brought together and crystallized to form groundwork for policy debate and change. Starting from the product of the assemblage all the way to the projection phase, the ultimate change was to create debates led by the citizen’s and bring them to penetrate the urban cloud. the constellations of meshwork Starting from the problematization of the situation the extraction of the resources from the commotion in Anarkali was started.

Simultaneously the leads from the analysis came forward to inform the design strategies for the project. One of the most urgent premise of the situation came forward to expose the looping movement of the people in Anarkali. The mobility of the migrated citizen for the economic resources left a gap in any sort of proposal of design strategy because of the lack of the sense of attachment of the resident to the space. Taking this issue the first step of the project was initiated using the key of recreating the glorious identity of Anarkali and pave a way for the locals to build attachments with it. The Assemblage, The Activation and The Projection narrow down five

main composing themes including Citizens Archive, Artifact Mapping, Activism Mapping, Media Mapping and Mapping Anarkali to cover the scape of Anarkali and overlaid them all together in a series of a constellation meshwork.

The diagram below conceptually lays out these thematic and their shifting roles in the three phases using the key indicators as the theoretical underpinning of each phase.

The streets as we see it | Citizen’s archive The streets as we see it component (the citizens’ archive) uses the traditional acts of storytelling from the protruding balconies of the narrow streets of Anarkali. This nostalgic imaginary shows that the stories of the spaces converge it to be places of ownership. ‘The streets as we see it is’ a derivative of a similar idea which aims to bring the narratives of Anarkali through the eyes of the people of Lahore. The stories told through this curated process become the resource of the community and engrave it in the history of time and space. Using the frameworks discussed in earlier chapters, this component works on the themes of places as stories.

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The process of the citizen’s archive gets started through the assemblage phase of the project.

Here the assemblage is the main source of action which collects curated stories from Anarkali and knits a combination of them in the online database. The diagram below summarizes each of the steps in the journey of the citizens’ archive.

Using the hashtag data and popular resources the assemblage collects the photos and videos that encapsulate the chronicles of anarkali. This idea feeds into reclaiming the identity Anarkali and its residents. The activation phase of this component gets kicked off using the basis of co-production and spatialization. Here the collaborators who have bested their expertise in story-telling in Lahore will be invited to initiate a process of coproduction. One of the potential partner organization for this phase is the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP). This is a non-profit organization dedicated to cultural and historic preservation, operating in Karachi and Lahore. CAP has focused its attention on the tradition of verbal storytelling in Pakistan, emphasizing the importance of such narratives in a dialogue on national identity. The organization has three main goals: to preserve and provide access to the archive, to build and support educational

programs, and to develop educational products based on the testimonies collected.

Another such alignment is the Bazaar Asia; a course at the social sciences school in Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). It takes a pedagogical approach towards the role of bazaars in Asia. The coursework includes students collecting verbal narratives of the bazaars and documenting them via different visual medium. The academic work of the students from this course work can be added to the partnerships of the activation phase. Using these partners the narratives slowly get knitted in the forms of stories and chronicles in the space of anarkali.

The spatialization of this process comes from the resource of the Anarkali Mapping component of the assemblage. Using the marked spaces like the Tollington Market, the Main Street, the Hafiz Juice Corner and the Neela Gumbat square, the cocreated stories start to occupy the spaces in the forms of exhibits, storytelling sessions, open mics, pop-up events and gatherings around the topics of local politics, urban issues etc. These events will be aimed at not only the sparking new

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dialogues but also familiarizing the people with the historic narratives of the area. The colloquial of qissa khawani (story-telling) gets recreated in the spaces of congregation in Anarkali. These slowly introduce the participatory development of the citizens’ narratives and incrementally generate more voices from the people of Anarkali. Taking the form of a resource itself, the citizens’ archive becomes an important component of connecting the people of the community together in the activation phase.

The next step in this procession will be to dedicate these co-produced knowledge databases out towards the public realm of the rest of Lahore. Bringing the stories from the people of Anarkali the projection will start to bring these components into bigger resonating events for example the Lahore Literary Festival, the IAPEX convention, City exhibits etc. The idea behind this is to diversify the opportunities of this projection and provide a buffer for the hyper rationalization of the process. The partnering organizations are introduced in the stretch of this process in order to make the process more sustainable and increase the likelihood of success. The main outcome of this whole process

will be that any resident of Anarkali will be able to record their story from their passions of and transcend it in their own spaces of identity. This can help the residents of Lahore to see the neighborhood of Anarkali from the eyes of the people residing in it. All of these phases get looped back to constantly feed the assemblage in order make it more densely resourceful over time and to freeze the identity of the glorious Anarkali.

This published form of media will be linked to become printed media all through the process using the resources of the printing press within the neighborhood of Anarkali. This collectively generates a media map of itself as the constantly reiterating resource.

Borrowed from Time | Collection of Artifacts

spaces and moments. There is a plethora of work that exists and is slowly diminishing with the advent of other media. The research will tap into these fading artifacts as intangible spaces of intervention where stories and narratives exist and need to be resurfaced again to understand the Anarkali and the rest of the city. With respect to this we have looked into the works of some poets, writers and artists including Anwar Masood, Sadat Hassan Manto, Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie, Bapsi Sidhwa etc. Highlighting and reinvigorating the existing urban imaginaries of the area through making artifacts more accessible and understandable to the citizens the assemblage creates the collective reflection of all of these curated artifacts. The diagram below lays out the process of this component.

Borrowed from Time will explore the different artifacts capturing the essence of Anarkali over the course of time. Anarkali’s rich culture has been the subject of many artifacts in the course of history. A lot has been written about the culture of this place and the significance of the character of the neighborhood. These artifacts are not just frozen imaginaries of yesteryear but are narrative and dialogues that exist even today in temporal

This will phase out into the spatialization of the component Borrowed from Time, into forms of physical installations, exhibits, poetry sessions, literature reading etc. around the identified congregation spaces from the mapping. This gets matured into the projection phase through bringing the artifacts to the attention of the city wide exhibits. The theme of anarkali through these artifacts can be used the premise to project

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the resonating history to the rest of Lahore. The identity of Anarkali gets retold and reclaimed in this process of finding the historic tales of the glory of Anarkali.

Reclaiming Our Urban | Activism Mapping Reclaiming Our Urban is started from a mapping exercise that connects all the activism work done around the neighborhood of Anarkali. This is done for the people of Anarkali and Lahore to understand how different areas have been affected over the course of time. Spatializing these data resources through mapped instruments shows which areas need the community’s attention. This mapping also connects the various activist groups in order to create a network of support for the various efforts that are being carried out by them. Using these examples of organizations which are already working on ground, the design includes systems to perpetuate the conversations by the locals into narratives that can be used to spark social dialogues. One of such organization is the Lahore Conservation Society, a non-profit that has been working since the 1980’s to conserve the historical and socio ecological environment of Lahore. They played an active role in creating

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resistance against the Orange Metro Line and have been great advocates of sustainable growth in the city. Occo Lahore and Maryam Hussain are other important collaborators in the activation phase of this project. Occo is a think tank based in Lahore that has been working along with Maryam Hussain, a social activist, to create awareness about the displacement being caused by the Orange Metro Line. Their work in the area of Neighborhood of Anarkali is significant and will be connected through activism mapping platform.

The diagram below shows the process of the component of the activism defined here.

The activation phase brings these people together and create capacity building workshop sessions in the communal spaces of Anarkali informed by the mapping component of the assemblage. The social initiatives allow the locals to learn about their own rights and how to empower themselves in the face of adversity. The workshopping sessions are themed on the topics of housing real estate, laws and regulation, infrastructure, policy etc. all co-produced in partnerships with the local non-profits identified above. The purpose of these workshops would be to make community organizing more efficient and familiar with bureaucratic structures in city

planning and how they work. This activation phase gets translated into the projection phase by the baseline of empowerment of the locals and development of learning models for community organization for other causes and even other communities in Lahore. The main aim of the projection is to build a community strength that can self-sustain its problematic situations and organize themselves through initiatives like town halls etc.

Knitting the collective | Mapping Anarkali Knitting the collective is an ongoing exercise with the residents of the neighborhood and the rest of the city to create a collective mapping resource of the neighborhood. The idea is to connect the different interpretive narratives of the people Anarkali and identify the spatial resources, places of engagement etc. This is done to create a densely packed local resource for the neighborhood and also to include the identity of the neighborhood into the form of built spaces in the neighborhood. This resource gets phased into the activation phase by collaborations with various cartography and urban experts. At the same time it also becomes pushed forward in the form of a resource to the rest of the components

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of the assemblage. The diagram below represents the process of this component.

One of the collaborator is proposed to be Nigraan-e-Lahore, a group of citizens initiating discussion on the city’s current issues through a process of collective thinking. This association can be used to create exhibitions after engaging with communities in Anarkali about concepts of displacement, alienation and exclusion with regards to city planning. This leads into cartography exercises in order to introduce the tool of cartography to the residents of Anarkali.

The final projection of this component gets initiated by creating a massive ongoing portal for mapping that can be used as a tool for any sort of activism in the neighborhood and the rest of the city.

Revisiting

the

published

world

|

Media

Mapping Revisiting the published initiated to map the different media reportings circulating about the neighborhood and consolidate them within one common space. A part of this section will be to do a situational analysis of the media clippings that

made significant waves in the city in order for people to understand how to use media as tool of resistance and accountability. This section will also connect the members of the community to various media outlets and how they can serve the interest of the neighborhood. The diagram below represents the process of this component.

The important aspect of this journey is to use the whole assemblage as a media tool to propagate the knowledge in a condensed form. This media tool uses each of the component into generating its mass effect of creating the community ties and local resources alongside the co-production of identity.

Backtracking Knitting all of these components together the constellation mesh works creates a multifaceted effect on the current situation of Anarkali. The collective aim of the whole design framework is to be able to cover all the aspects of the key indicators and spread them in the described phases of plan. The outlook comes forward to retain the name of Anarkali and catalyze the commotion happening in the niches of these

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spaces. Once catalyzed and mediated through the meso spaces of collaborations the urban cloud gets the denting effect of the voices of the people of Anarkali and the rest of the city.

Conclusion Future Outcomes and Projections Creating this extremely complicated meshwork of the urban narrative curation processes the future projections can also be traced through these manifestations countering the shadows of the development in Anarkali. This study can be used as the informative tool to further apply and modify the way the urban projects dictate the communities in Lahore and also instigate the conversations and efforts around the topics of urban identities. This can prove to be one of the ways to introduce the most important kind of selfawareness that is possible to save Lahore from the devastation of urban development.

The empowerment of the citizens and the proximity of the citizens towards their urban narratives can in turn create ripples in the policy infrastructure of the city. Each of the components traced through their incubation, commotion, and surfacing and precipitation process can be traced further to their future policy scope of influence.

From budget cuts to urban public spaces reclamation these changes will be unique to the

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characteristics of the components. Here it is important to link the tools and the products created through the thesis as both active and passive mediums that can achieve the macro impacts of the urban transformation.

Different parts of the world, governments and incumbents have changed their approach towards community engagement. This changed approach has brought to light new ways of seeing critical issues in city designing. Processes like participatory budgeting and planning through community engagement have opened new venues for us to explore. The threads we have started with this project, we hope, with proper nurture and time, will pierce through the urban cloud and resonate within the policy sphere.

We understand the precarious socio-political situation of our country and understands the hurdles and threats awaiting this project. Which is why we think this project is needed now more than ever. The connection and networks formed through these alliances will be the buffer that will protect this community from the future disturbances.

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