What do cities owe their citizens—and what do citizens owe their cities? This question should lie at the heart of debates around Pakistan’s choking air, congested roads, and crumbling infrastructure.
French philosopher Henri Lefebvre framed this as the right to the city: the idea that urban life should be shaped by those who live it, not merely managed by those who govern it. To have this right is to have a voice in how a city grows, breathes, and nurtures its people—and to share the responsibility of caring for it.
In cities like Lahore and Karachi, that balance is broken. Unchecked expansion, real estate development, and consumption-driven growth have strained both people and environment, leaving citizens alienated from the very spaces they inhabit. Reclaiming the right to the city is less about demanding entitlements and more about rebuilding a reciprocal relationship with the urban world.
LEFEBVRE’S URBAN COVENANT
When Lefebvre wrote about the city in the 1960s, he wasn’t offering policy advice. He was responding to the sense that modern life was disconnecting people from the places that once gave life meaning. Post-war industrialisation and suburban expansion were turning cities into machines of efficiency and profit, while ordinary residents were losing access—and belonging—to their urban spaces.
For Lefebvre, the city is a living entity shaped by everyday experiences. Streets, markets, parks, and neighbourhoods take form from human interaction. The right to the city insists that those who live it daily should shape how it evolves. It calls for participation, for claiming urban space not as property but as a shared project.
He warned against what he called “the bureaucratic society of organised consumption,” where cities are managed as commodities rather than experienced as shared life. Roads serve cars, not people; public spaces shrink; planning becomes control rather than care. Reclaiming the city, Lefebvre argued, meant recovering its collective spirit, seeing urban growth as a life-serving project, and taking responsibility for it.
WHEN GROWTH OUTPACES CARE
Decades later, Lefebvre’s warnings echo loudly in Pakistan. Cities like Lahore and Karachi are expanding faster than they can sustain life. Lahore’s air is increasingly toxic; Karachi’s coastline and natural buffers are vanishing. Growth driven by profit has replaced growth rooted in belonging.
Lahore’s outward expansion has swallowed farmland, orchards, and open spaces to make way for housing, motorways, and shopping malls. Roads privilege cars over people, while industrial emissions, construction dust, and loss of green cover have made the air literally unbreathable. Karachi’s land hunger has eaten into the coastline, eroding both nature and resilience. The crisis is not just environmental—it is a crisis of connection between people and place.
REBUILDING THE COVENANT
Responses remain reactive: smog seasons provoke temporary outrage, school closures, and fines, but rarely systemic change. Progress is measured by what the city can build, not what it can sustain. The right to the city has become the right to consume it: cars, gated communities, and air conditioners that battle the pollution they help create.
This is both an environmental and ethical collapse. Public space is a privilege; mobility is a commodity; clean air is a seasonal luxury. The city functions but feels alien to its inhabitants. Reclaiming the right to the city means recognising that the bond between people and place is not fixed—it can be rebuilt.
In Lahore, this could start with pedestrian-friendly streets, restored tree cover, and treating clean air as a shared right. Cities thrive when they invite people in: streets belong to pedestrians, parks to families, and air to everyone.
The right to the city is not a claim of ownership but a claim of belonging. At its heart, it is the right—and the duty—to keep our cities alive.