Reviving Lahore

Contents:
Where are the Tower Cranes?
Development Paradigm: Kothis over commerce!
Why only 2 Hotels in Lahore?
Where is Lahore’s Commercial Center?


Where are the Tower Cranes?

“Have you seen any tower cranes in Lahore? You know those things that they use to build high rise buildings!” I have asked many audiences this question and always received the same answer: “NO!”

Imagine our children have grown up without seeing a tower crane!

Tower cranes are a common fixture at any major construction site. They're pretty hard to miss -- they often rise hundreds of feet into the air, and can reach out just as far. The construction crew uses the tower crane to lift steel, concrete, large tools like acetylene torches and generators, and a wide variety of other building materials.

There is no other city in the world of any reasonable size that does not have many tower cranes. Certainly a city with a population of over five million should have several tower cranes dotted across its neighborhoods. Mature cities like London and New York still boast several tower cranes as the city continues to evolve its skyline. Younger more rapidly developing cities like Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur show off a much greater density of tower cranes given the rapidly expanding construction sectors.

Why is it that Lahore has never had one? Should we all not ask that question?
Pursue this line of questioning and you find yourself asking” which is the tallest building in Lahore?” and “why does Lahore have no tall buildings?” WAPDA house made in 1966 remains the tallest building in Lahore! Why?
Experience has taught me to look for answers to such questions in regulation. A little inquiry proved me right!

Ever since I can remember the emphasis in Lahore has been on housing colonies based on estates for the rich. The elite of Lahore wishes to keep the commercial areas as well as housing for the poor out of site and out of mind. Those who regulate Lahore are mainly drawn from the civil service and from the upper strata of society, use this principle as the cornerstone of their planning.

All Lahoris know how grudgingly these people who frame the rules give ground to commercialization. For years these regulators prevented construction anywhere beyond the Mall. Even Davis Road, McLoed road etc had fight considerably lengthy battles to achieve the status of commercial areas. More often than not, the approach taken was to construct and on occasion use bribery to achieve a fait accompli of a poorly constructed commercial complex.

In model town and Gulberg where the town expanded after independence, the regulators were concerned with preserving the manors/kothis. For years, commercial construction on the Main Boulevard of Gulberg as well Ferozepur road was disallowed. When grudgingly it was allowed, large commercialization fees were levied and permissions (at a price) from neighbors were required. The rents of the kothiwallahs were increased as they gave permission to commercial developers.

When I queried one of these regulators with my queries on the tower cranes recently, he proudly told me how they had designated 10 areas as commercial zones recently. What infinite wisdom to allow ten areas to gain in value. Which ten areas would these be? Who would benefit? How are they related to the regulators?

The regulators have other means at his or her disposal to slow commercial construction. They have levied a commercialization fee on land that may have been zoned as commercial. It has been very steep in the past making already expensive commercial construction even more expensive. Now it has been reduced to 25% of the market value of land. Why is it collected? Ostensibly for all the amenities that the city is supposed to provide! But I thought that was what property tax was for! But of course, do not forget that the Kothiwallahs need to see less commercial construction and that is the constituency of the regulator!

Of course manor-owners like to preserve their country character of Lahore. Mahathir builds the tallest building in the world. Other cities including Delhi are reaching for the stars. The gentry of Lahore through the regulators of LDA and LMC etc have ruled that no building can go over 4 stories initially. So your 25 % of market value commercialization fee will obtain permission for only a 4-storey construction. Should you wish to go over that there is then a per floor penalty (RS. 60.per square foot) The penalty since it is charged at a flat rate penalizes cheaper land. The maximum that you can go up to is 14 floors by paying 25% commercialization fee and 10 times the per floor penalty. Essentially that means that you have to pay at least twice the value of the land should you wish to construct a fourteen floor building.

Regulators not only stifle construction through cumbersome and expensive procedures, they also destroy the real estate rental market through rent control. Every major city in the world has eliminated rent control. All rent control does is reduce the supply of rental real estate and destroys the incentive to maintain quality real estate. Our regulators, however, are of the view that they know the value of rental real estate better than thee market. Not surprisingly, Mall road has shabby property that tenants have been renting for years at a rent that has not kept pace with inflation or real estate values. People who have had leases for decades continue to hold them and sometime even sublet. Rent control must go as an urgent priority if the construction sector is to be revitalized.

With market rents, pension funds, insurance companies and other financing companies will step forward to finance and hold real estate development. Professional real estate management and development companies will develop. The construction sector will pick up and quality real estate will be developed.

It is not surprising then that with so many controls and regulations you do not see tower cranes in Lahore. The regulators of Lahore and their masters the gentry of the kothis have ruled that Lahore will remain provincial. We will have no high rises, no serious blocks of flats, no commercial complexes! Consequently no tower cranes!

What a pity! We are a poor country and need as many of our economic sectors to be growing rapidly as we can possibly push. Construction is one of the most important sectors that can contribute strongly to the incomes and welfare of the ordinary man. Construction is labor intensive and hence generates significant employment. It is often the first sector to pick up and contributes strongly to economic growth.

We need construction in Lahore if we expect growth to accelerate. For construction to pick up the regulator and our society must develop a more benign attitude to commercial construction. Fees must be drastically reduced. Commercialization must be easier and more widespread and we must allow more high rises. And rent control must be eliminated.


Development Paradigm: Kothis over commerce!

We were dining in Cairo at a lovely restaurant in the 33 floor Le Meridien overlooking the Nile. The skyline full of tall well-finished buildings comprising numerous hotels, office blocks and beautiful apartment complexes inspired me to make the remark, “why can we not have tall buildings and hotels in Lahore?” My friend Ghazala from Lahore spontaneously responded, “I like Lahore the way it is! We have lovely gardens, convenient distances to our haunts, the Punjab Club, Golf and liberty. Let us preserve it!”

Ghazala had quite succinctly encapsulated the development paradigm for Lahore that our bureaucrat/city planners have held so dearly to heart over the last fifty years. They believe that, “the city is for the convenience of the kothiwallahs.” The residential convenience of the kothiwallahs and their clubs and social haunts is all what the planners cater for. It is not surprising that what has been allowed to develop with rapidity in our fair city is golf courses and highways for the kothis.

GOR in Lahore typifies it all. It boasts of 2 social clubs—the Punjab Club and the Officers Club—in its midst. Yet efforts by some owners to plan a hotel or a school in a large 4-acre estate in the heart of GOR were blocked on grounds that such things cannot be allowed in a residential area. At the same time, GOR boasts of a 4-acre mansion for the high court chief justice that has been vacant for most of our history. It is maintained at taxpayer expense only for the occasional weddings of the children of the justices. Yet nowhere in GOR or on the Mall is there any room for commercial development.
Lahore has been developed on the basis of housing schemes typified by the DOHA. The idea is to build little rectangular plots with very poor quality commercial construction based on small few marla plots. It is no wonder that all commercial construction has the look of very small provincial colonial towns. But the rich do not want large hotels and shopping malls. For that they go west or now even to Dubai. All they want is little convenience stores for grocery and limited tailoring etc.

Office space is available on a very limited basis in Lahore. You have to rent a house and convert the bedrooms and bathrooms to offices. The same goes for schools and other commercial activities. Even then you live under the ax of the regulator who may at any time force you out for they only reluctantly allow such property to be used on a commercial basis for it does impinge on kothi life.

Yes land in available for clubs. It is interesting that the Punjab Club and the Sindh Club that at partition had no non-white members were not designated evacuee properties but were gifted to the elite who promptly became members. The land that has been transferred to them at a hugely subsidized rate constitutes a transfer from the poor taxpayers of Pakistan to the kothiwallah elite.

Similarly, the gymkhana golf course that continues to be leased out at a nominal annual rent in the heart of the city when there is no room for street hawkers or a market where the poor can perhaps establish curio shops. Land for clubs is available more easily than land for commercial development that will generate jobs or land for schools that will produce much needed skills.
These clubs are commercial ventures and should be treated as such. Their land should be properly priced and they should be taxed at market rates so that the rich should pay a fair price for their entertainment.
The poor have had to struggle for space. Canal Park, Jail Road and in many other streets, the poor have fought for small kiosks. It is a constant struggle. Carpenters, weavers, tailors, and all manner of artisans set up informal shops to earn a living. For years they continue to live under threat of expulsion. Every now and again the regulators push them out but they have nowhere to go. They set up a stall elsewhere. If they are lucky, as in canal park, these businesses will be blessed by regulators and they will be allowed to set up a diminutive unappealing set of shops. The very architecture and ambience of these places dooms these businesses to a bleak future.
The Regulatory mindset has to change if Lahore is to be a premiere city in Asia. Cities through history have been proud of their commerce and their urbanization. Florence, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Venice had long ago established markets for gold, stocks, calico, flowers crafts etc. To make room for thriving commerce, estates gave way to consolidated mixed-use urban space. As technology allowed, they did not shy from going up with taller and taller buildings.

The regulators must recognize that sleepy country estates (kothis) are for the countryside and should be pushed further out into the country and suburbia. City fathers should take pride in their urban structures (shopping malls, office ad apartment blocks, hotels, entertainment centers etc) and not just a collection of kothis. It should be recognized that commercial construction is pro-poor since such construction creates a vast number of jobs during and after the construction. Our development paradigm must therefore shift from its current emphasis on ‘kothis for the rich’ to ‘commercial development for the poor.’


Why only 2 Hotels in Lahore?

Talk to an Indian in Delhi or the Punjab even today and he/she will become tearful in fond memory of Lahore. Sometime in the future, we should expect the borders to be opened. The flood of tourists that can be expected then will have nowhere to live for hotel development in Lahore has been severely retarded by unfriendly and overbearing regulators.

The Intercontinental came to Lahore in 1966 and the Hilton in the early seventies. Strangely enough the Intercontinental left in the eighties while the Hilton claims that they were physically forced out despite an existing management contract.

Since then, no large multinational appears to be interested in Lahore. Neither has there been a construction of a single large hotel here in Lahore. Is our city of seven million so unattractive?

Delhi, Colombo, Dubai, Cairo, Bangkok all boast huge hotels run by many large multinational chains. Hotels are the palaces of the modern age. They strive to show off the best in architecture and display the ultimate in grandeur and elegance. In many cities, they are a significant part of the skyline.
Lahore’s history can be marketed for tourist dollars. It is quite surprising then that there is not more demand for hotel space. Much of the history is along the Ravi. Yet the Ravi remains undeveloped for tourism. It does not boast of a single hotel or commercial construction.

The only two five star hotels were developed along the Mall within a mile of each other. Naturally, other commercial or tourist business would like to agglomerate there. But where is the space. Alhambra, the colonial governor’s mansion, the administrative staff college and sundry other government buildings, and of course the golf course leave no space for such construction.
The Kothiwallahs and their bureaucrats like this sleepy Lahore, which is just developed enough to maintain their lazy lifestyle. I often ask them this question “where can Hilton build a hotel in Lahore?” The response is Bedian, past DOHC and Niazbeg, Raiwind Road. When you tell them that hotels prefer city centers or tourist sites, they are surprised! Why should hotels and not kothis be located in city centers? In their logic hotels and not kothis should be in suburbia whereas in the rest of the world, it is the opposite.
Well the mall has no space for hotels. Nor is there any space for hotels towards the old city and the historic Lahore. Most kothiwallahs/bureaucrats would now suggest, go to the main boulevard. Review the situation and you find that the largest lot-size there is an acre if you are lucky. Reasonable sized hotels would have parking lots bigger than that.

Yet there appears to be a demand for hotel development. Despite odds stacked against them, people have built hotels. Recently, we saw the Holiday Inn come to Lahore in a very strange location. Tucked away above Egerton road on a very small lot, with a limited drive and parking space. A Best western has also come to town in a corner of liberty again without a drive and parking. Obviously, this shows that there is demand for hotel construction but thanks to unimaginative regulation, there is no space available for it.

Lahore continues to service the kothis. Housing schemes appear to be the only way to develop Lahore. The pattern of these schemes, which take years to approve and develop, has now been well established. The bulk of these schemes are plots for kothis. Some commercial pace to service the kothis needs is allowed for. Since all that we need are some grocery stores and a limited number of small shops, commercial plots are limited to marlas. How can you build the palaces of the twenty first century—hotels-- in marlas?
Where is the commercial heart of the city? Where are the large parcels of land that will allow large-scale integrated development of shopping centers, hotels, office space, theaters and residential construction in close proximity/ It is only when you have such proximity that you have a Manhattan or a Covent Garden or a Latin Quarter.

The current approach to Lahore development, which gives priority to kothis, will stifle such development. Our regulators of Lahore must come out of the feudal age and understand how cities like Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Cairo and shanghai are developing. We must allow more integrated development in city centers. For this development, the regulatory infrastructure must allow for land consolidation and mixed use and allow kothis to be eliminated from the center of town and for them to move to suburbia.

My dream is that someday the historic Lahore will boast of its own palaces of the twenty first century, its own theaters and large commercial constructions. Nostalgic Indians will continue to envy us Lahoris for the beauty and culture of Lahore. And when peace is here, they will visit us in droves to deliver tourist dollars to us. But we will have to shift our development paradigm from its current emphasis on ‘kothis for the rich’ to ‘commercial development for the poor’ if this is to happen.


Where is Lahore’s Commercial Center?

For much of its life in Pakistan, Lahore has been struggling with the task of defining its commercial center. Even today it continues to do so. Unlike other cities, spontaneous development has been stifled in Lahore through harsh government intervention and myopic vision of its city elders.

Most of us Lahoris will remember how grudging the regulators have been in allowing space for commercial construction. For years they herded all commerce onto Mall road west of the Assembly Chambers. Virtually all land west of the Chambers was government owned almost all the way up to the border and city planners certainly could not challenge that assumption. Naturally that left only one is for development—West of the Assembly Chambers.

Even Egerton Road-Davis Road region was denied the privilege of commercial construction for many years. Informally and through bribery Jail road and Ferozepur Road started some commercial construction. The Main Boulevard in Gulberg was raring to go. Abif Majeed Road made a few vain attempts. A Sheraton threatened to come up where Globe Cinema used to be but the Corp Commander ruled that his back yard could be spied upon from the Hotel and hat project was killed (so were thousands of jobs).

Regulators and the kothialllahs who all felt like the corp commander that their country estates should not have any neighbors higher than their houses frowned upon such spontaneous construction.. Years of legal battles wasted time. Many projects were killed. Permissions were delayed exorbitantly. Possibly huge bribes were collected. All these factors served to increase the cost of commercial construction. The net result was limited commercial construction and that too of a very poor quality. Think about it, there is hardly a prestigious office address in Lahore.

Now the regulator recognizes that the Mall corridor that was earlier regarded as the commercial center of the city is limited in space and is becoming more and more distant from the developing suburbia of Gulberg DOHA etc, they are saying the city center has to move to Gulberg. They are now encouraging more development on that side.

We are now facing and interesting and somewhat curious situation. There is a commercial center in the segment north west of the Colonial Governor’s Mansion. The new development is being encouraged south east of GOR. Natural development would be for these two commercial developments to meet and form one large commercial center of Lahore. That would ease transport costs and the costs of doing business since businesses need to communicate with each other.

However, given that our planners operate under the paradigm that colonial government property should not be privatized or other wise used, this will never be allowed. The two emerging centers are now divided by colonial government property—Colonial Governor’s Mansion, GOR, Staff College, State Guest House, Mayo Gardens. I am now told that to preserve this they are prepared to let the northwestern development of the Mall depreciate and die. What luxury for a poor country?

How do the 2 centers communicate in the future? What of mass transit systems that might link the 2 centers? The answer is simple in the mind of the regulator. I was told in all seriousness that we do not need to go the direct route but around through Ferozepur road to Gulberg etc. The planner is comfortable with the costs of fragmented development. And this is a poor country!

It appears that the planner’s preoccupation is to maintain vast tracts of colonial property in the middle of town regardless of the consequences for the city. This colonial property was built on the fringes of the city and was supposed to stay on the fringes. I am pretty certain that the British bureaucrats had they still been here would have reacted differently.
For example, many of us lament the need for entertainment and hotel space. There is the Colonial Governor’s mansion that the majority of us Lahoris have not seen (even though we can see the White House and Buckingham Palace). It hides behind huge walls. Why not drop the walls and allow a reputable hotel chain to make it into a nice high-priced hotel? The space can also be used to develop other interesting revenue generating commercial activity while preserving the flavor of the colonial governor’s mansion.

The staff college, the state guesthouse and the Civil Service Academy all need not sit on prime property. They can be moved out into the suburbs and possibly even into the countryside so that training is a more reflective environment. The existing buildings on the Mall can then be used for theaters and development of a commercial nature. Their huge grounds need not be preserved in their colonial glory. Clever architects can work wonders with blending history with modern construction and commercial usage. The proceeds of the project can be used to seriously improve he quality of civil service training.

To link the northwestern and the southeastern commercial developments, we will need to eliminate GOR. This need not cause us tremendous grief for we truly need to modernize our civil service. One important element of this modernization is that perks should be discontinued and that compensation should be only in cash. Perks such as housing are a wasteful form of compensation. The cost of providing perks is high given the possibility of corruption. Perks may also not be valued as much by the recipient as it costs to provide them. By eliminating GOR, Punjab government may be able to get additional resources that are required to wean civil servants away from perks to cash-only compensation.

If GOR were to be eliminated, the northwestern and the southeastern commercial developments can be linked together by opening out routes through GOR. Moreover, since the government owns most of the land in GOR, large parcels can be sold to some serious developers to allow sophisticated and modern commercial complexes to come to Lahore.

Pakistan uses expensive international assistance to attain a higher economic growth rate and to alleviate poverty. Yet it wastes prime city center property with useless government offices and residences. It also discourages commercial development through cumbersome regulation on both construction and rental. . Hardly surprising then that we accumulate debt while not achieving high growth rates or generating enough employment to help the poor! Bungling and muddleheaded regulation is often what sustains poverty and this episode of city management is no exception!