Evolution of Town Planning in Pakistan: With a Specific Reference to Punjab Province

The book describes the world's oldest human settlements during the rather long and diversified sets of civilizations and cultural epochs in the regions, which are now situated within the territorial limits of Pakistan, and highlights three historical periods, namely (i) the age of neolithic settlements, (ii) the Indus Valley civilization, and (iii) the period of precolonial empires and kingdoms and against this backdrop deals with the human settlements of the colonial and postcolonial period in Pakistan. The main motivation for writing this book has been threefold. First, to increase the awareness among the current and prospective students of town planning in particular and the planners at large, in general, about the evolutionary process of town planning in Pakistan. Second, to identify some of the shortcomings, gaps, and overlapping in the process of planning and development of towns in Pakistan. And third, to emphasize the need to undertake further research about the various facets of the subject area. This book is a time series rather than a cross-sectional analysis of the Evolution of Town Planning in Pakistan. It attempts to highlight the various processes and geopolitical landmarks during the nine-thousand-years-long evolutionary processes of physical planning and development in the Indian subcontinent in general and those in Pakistan in particular. It traverses a long temporal and evolutionary progression of town planning processes in Pakistan. This book is a very modest effort to fill a huge gap and may even provide an incentive for the future planning historians and academicians to undertake more in-depth cross-sectional analysis of various processes comprehensively.

Dr. Anis ur Rahmaan is an engineer, architect, and urban and regional planner. He has studied and taught in ten institutions of higher learning in the USA, UK, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. He prepared the first Master Plan for Greater Lahore - the second largest city of Pakistan - in the 1960s, which has not only been catalogued in the Library of Congress but also in the libraries of the major USA’s universities. He worked for a number of years as Director of Town Planning of the Punjab and North Western Frontier Provinces in Pakistan. He was awarded International Development Fellowship by the East-West Center, University of Hawaii in 1967; and later conferred the Best Professor’s Award by the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has also worked as United Nations Advisor for Urban and Regional Planning for about ten years in Saudi Arabia and as a UN Consultant in the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. In 1999 his name appeared in Who’s Who in the World. Currently he is engaged in community development and poverty alleviation through education and vocational training programs on philanthropic basis in Pakistan, Dr. Rahmaan has already published two books: (i) Anjuman-e-Arzu in Urdu language for the people at large and (ii) The Imperatives of Urban and Regional Planning: Concepts and Case Studies from the Developing World for the academicians, practitioners and students of urban and regional planning. Anjuman-e-Arzu has already been translated in English language under the title of ＂A Galaxy of Desires＂. All the three books are available on Amazon.com. Dr. Rahmaan has also contributed a number of articles in leading literary and professional journals and chapters in edited books. His e-mail addresses are: (i) arahmaan@hotmail.com; and (ii) anis.urrahmaan@gmail.com.