Lahore has a mythical aura about it due to a host of historical factors, known and little known. The aura is not immune to changes. Levi-Strauss, the great anthropologist who visited Lahore in the mid-twentieth century wrote in his book Tristes Tropiques: “As I sought for the real Lahore at the end of those shaded alleys, I had constantly to flatten myself against the wall: flocks of sheep -- buffaloes each as big as three cows or most often lorries — No sooner was I out of this labyrinth than I came to the area, huge avenue sketched out among the ruins (due, these, to the riots of the recent years) of houses five hundred years old. So often houses have been destroyed and patched together again, so absolute is their decrepitude that notion of period has no meaning in their context. -- I should have liked to live in the age of real travel, when the spectacle on offer had not been blemished, contaminated and confounded; then I could have seen Lahore not as I saw it, but as it appeared to Bernier, Tavernier, Manucci. There is no end, of course, to such conjectures”.

Levi-Strauss has been quoted at some length to show that even great minds find it difficult to reconcile with the changes that inevitably take place in human settlements. If someone like him visits Lahore one of these days, he would like to see the Walled City as it appeared to Levi Strauss who had expected Lahore to be what he heard it was. Cities never remain the same; they undergo topographic and demographic changes.

The Walled City has changed in the aftermath of Afghan war which displaced millions of people. “The Russian invasion of Afghanistan hit the old city hardest. As the original inhabitants moved out, new Afghan migrants ganged up and purchased old houses on the cheap. -- These Afghans, with their strict inward culture and way of life, are today in majority. -- Just how the Walled City will unfold in the days to come is not difficult to imagine,” writes Majid Sheikh, an authority on the history of Lahore, in his last week’s column in this daily.

Imagine what will happen in sociological and cultural terms if the Walled City, the heart of Lahore, becomes a hotbed of tribal customs and rigidly conservative way of life the Afghans are proud of? It has already started denting the open and liberal culture the city is known for. It’s somewhat similar phenomenon though on a lesser scale that we witness in Karachi; ultra-conservative segments, carrier of tribal pride and village idiocy, intervening by their presence and practice in the urbanisation process that intrinsically loosens the grip of the past and liberate people from its claptrap. The problem of arms and drugs traditionally associated with Afghans is of course a menace but more menacing is their anti-urban ethos that may impact the city’s cultural landscape negatively for the simple reason that it embodies sanctity of anachronistic traditions instead of creativity, innovation and individual freedom; the hallmarks of urban life. All this happened to the Walled City because no one, including its residents and city government lacking in sense of history, bothered to take care of the congested and overcrowded ancient urban space.

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A bigger city is, in fact, found outside the Walled City surrounded by sprawling glitzy suburbia. Private and state-backed builders are going at breakneck speed to expand the urban area by establishing new housing colonies for middle and upper classes. Working class is excluded from the space being colonised because it cannot buy what is on offer as the price of land has artificially been raised and construction cost has gone up, making the owning a house a distant dream. But selling and buying continue as the flow of people from the towns and countryside to Lahore is on the rise due to the myriad factors such as economic opportunities, prospect of better education and availability of medical facilities and chances of social mobility. Migrants to the city generally comprise landlords, medium and small-sized proprietors, landless peasants and artisans. They are from distinctly different classes but what they have in common is their rural ethos and norms which emphasise respect for socioeconomic hierarchy and age old customs. The mindset of the upper crust is that of land owners, not feudal lords as the feudalism in economic terms is fast dwindling due to global influences and division of inherited agricultural lands. They strive for well-paid white collar jobs or start their businesses, shunning the parasitic existence feudal lords crave for. The lower ranks do tough and menial jobs and are forced by their economic conditions to live in shanty towns or become squatters. This segment contributes more than others to accelerate the pace of urbanisation by providing services which the old inhabitants of the city are loath to render. Their role in the production of goods is also visibly significant.

All the segments from the rural areas settled or semi-settled in Lahore help in the pushing ahead the horizontal spread of urbanisation. They play a paradoxical role; they, with their hard work and agrarian cultural baggage, prove to be an impetus as well as an impediment in the process of urbanisation. The urban sprawls at the fringes offer scenes of peri-urban areas where people appear to be semi-urbanised. In short, we find in Lahore the processes of urbanisation and peri-urbanisation simultaneously at work.