Examining the Intricacies and Perpetual Issues in Urban Informal Settlements: Lessons from Two Case Studies of Informal Settlements in Lahore, Pakistan

Muhammad Mashhood  Arif; Oswald Devisch; Yves Schoonjans

doi:10.32350/10.32350/jaabe.61.04

Muhammad Mashhood Arif Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7881-3402
Oswald Devisch Hasselt University (UHasselt), Hasselt, Belgium https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3029-3057
Yves Schoonjans Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5692-1074

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32350/10.32350/jaabe.61.04

Keywords: built landscape, informality, informal settlements, slum housing, urbanism, urban mapping, urban morphology

Abstract

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Informal settlements have become a central part of urban imagery. It is a self-organized form of urbanization that expands beyond the reach of the state and encroaches upon, infiltrates, and inundates cities in the Global South. The forms of urban informality develop and offer a means of habitation for the urban poor, characterized by a lack of basic services, overcrowding, economic vulnerability, and an unhygienic urban environment. In Lahore, a metropolitan area with more than 11 million residents, informal settlement growth is the most perceptible. The current study deploys a case study approach to explore informal settlements in order to fully understand the intricate socioeconomic and physical issues that arise in these settlements. Fieldwork, which involved in-depth interviews, casual conversations, and photography surveys, was used to conduct this research. The data was collected using a proportionate and random sampling technique, with 80 samples from Shamspura Colony and 67 from Zia Colony obtained using Solvin’s formula. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were used to ensure that the data was geographically dispersed throughout the settlement.. The outcomes showed diversity in the two selected case study areas, namely Zia Colony and Shamspura Colony, in terms of the built environment, social aspects, governance issues, and economic opportunities. This research offers a more multifaceted synthesis of the problem by bringing together the social and physical constructs which may lead to a greater understanding of informal settlements issues and better strategies for addressing them at the local, national, and regional levels.

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Author Biographies

Muhammad Mashhood Arif, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium

Muhammad Mashhood Arif is a professional Urban Planner, Transportation Planner, and Architect. At present, he is based in Belgium.

Currently, he is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Architecture at the KU Leuven, Belgium. He received a Master’s Degree in Transportation Sciences and specialized in “mobility Management” from the University of Hasselt (2015-2017), Belgium. He has done his undergrad in City & Regional Planning (2010-2014) at the University of Engineering and Technology, Pakistan.

He initiated his research on the two most significant issues in Pakistan, housing and transportation planning. During his undergrad, he wrote his thesis and published an article on Improving the bidding power of poor through low-cost housing: Case of Lahore, Pakistan. His Master’s research at UHasselt aimed at achieving the learning from the Seoul, which is undoubtedly one of the world’s best transportation systems. He went to South Korea for data collection. He presented his Master’s Thesis on the topic: Comparison of Mode Choice Behavior for the towns of Bundang and Ilsan, South Korea, and graduated with his Master’s with great distinction.

In his professional experience, he worked at national & international urban planning and transport organizations for up to three years. He has worked as a researcher at the Korea Institute of Science & Technology (KIST), where he conducted Agent-Based Modelling to develop and forecast transportation needs and demand at the city scale. He also worked as a Senior Transportation Analyst at Urban Unit Pakistan. In collaboration with World Bank, he developed the framework for new connectivity corridors in relation to CPEC (China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. Moreover, he worked as an Assistant Director in Lahore Development Authority, Urban Planning Public Organization, where he planned, designed, developed, and executed city-level policies.

Motivated by every day dealing and experiencing the life of informal dwellers as a part of his professional job, he got entirely submerged by the thinking that these settlements could be more of a solution than a problem. In the wake of this, he initiated his Ph.D. research on exploring the insights into the public spaces in informal settlements that eventually led to their improvement.

His Ph.D. research, “Multilayered Public Spaces as Productive Assets towards more Sustainable Informal Settlements: The case study of Lahore, Pakistan,” explores the relationship between people and public spaces in the informal settlements of Lahore. His research attempts to understand how public spaces in informal settlements are appropriated and how the people of settlement produce, consume, transform, express, and give meaning to those spaces. His research proposed that public spaces, when seen as a rich and layered concept, can create an incremental urban change in such neighbourhoods towards greater sustainability.

His research is being supervised under the supervision of Prof. dr. Yves Schoonjans (Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, KU Leuven) and co-supervision of Prof. dr. Oswald Devisch (UHasselt).

You can follow Mashhood on these links:

www.linkedin.com/in/drmashhood

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Muhammad-Arif-113

https://www.kuleuven.be/wieiswie/en/person/00126861

http://lirias.kuleuven.be/cv?Username=U0126861

Oswald Devisch, Hasselt University (UHasselt), Hasselt, Belgium

Oswald Devisch is a civil engineer, architect and urban planner. He studied at KU Leuven and the Bartlett School of Architecture (London).

He obtained a PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology on spatial simulation models. Since 2006 he has been a associated with Hasselt University, where he slaloms between themes such as spontaneous transformation processes, new media, private urban development, urban games and spatial capacity building.

Currently, he is a Professor at Hasselt University and chairman of the Board of Examiners for the master's degree in architecture. He expertise lies in: Urban and Regional Design, Development and Planning, Urban and Regional Planning Policy, Instruments and Legislation, Urbanism and Regional Planning.

Yves Schoonjans, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Yves Schoonjans (1960) is a full professor at the KU Leuven (University of Leuven, Department of Architecture), Belgium and conducts research in the domain of recent urban history and theory with a focus on informal settlements and public spaces. He is currently serving as a Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, at KU Leuven, Belgium.

In 2013 together with Kris Scheerlinck he initiated the ‘Urban Projects, Collective Spaces and Local Identities’ research group. The research group gathers researchers from several disciplines (architecture, urban design, urbanism, heritage practice, history & theory of architecture and urbanism, digital spatial media, …). It aims to initiate and develop research on the making and using public/collective spaces in urban projects in relation to coherent theoretical approaches and discourses. After being vice-dean of Internationalisation and chair of the Research Department of Architecture, he is now dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the KU Leuven.

His research focuses on the relation between urban morphology, appropriation of public/collective spaces and daily practices. The research focuses on public/collective spaces such as parks, urban plazas, neighbourhood squares, markets, streets.... In urban development, everyday local identity and appropriation of public space play an important role in how a community organises itself and in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the South.

Since 2005 he has been involved as partner and lead-coordinator in several projects on urbanism and public spaces in different international programs (Erasmus, Mundus, ALFA , Gobal Minds… ) and participated in different project, especially in Latin America and, more recently, in Africa and Asia. Yves Schoonjans stayed abroad several times for his research and regularly traveled to Latin America for fieldwork, research, and educational cooperations.

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Examining the Intricacies and Perpetual Issues in Urban Informal Settlements: Lessons from Two Case Studies of Informal Settlements in Lahore, Pakistan

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