Evolution of Town Planning in Pakistan

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.