We can imagine people without city but can we visualise a city without people? At times the unimaginable happens; we do witness cities without people.

Haven’t you seen the images of fabled Syrian cities such as those of Palmyra, devastated by one of the ugliest wars of modern times triggered by unrestrained imperialist forces, big powers rivalry, religious militancy, state terrorism, sectarianism, democratic urges and regime change agenda creating a perniciously tainted spectacle that horrifies all except those who are perpetrators of this horrendous crime against people and cities.

What is left of the hardest hit Syrian cities are broken bricks, shattered walls, gaping rooftops, mangled steel and countless tons of debris in an eerily weird void that seems to have been created by implacably hostile aliens.

These are the cities without people. And cities without people are ghost lands. But cities with people are marshy lands because there is nowhere for the putrid waters of unhealthily forced togetherness to flow away to. “People and the City” was precisely the theme of the 7th three-day International THAAP Conference organised by Prof Pervaiz Vandal and Prof Sajida Haider Vandal last week. Both are illustrious architects and educationists who have decades of teaching and professional practice to their credit.

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Writers, scholars, historians, economists, sociologists, artists, town planners, designers and architects from all over the globe gathered together in Lahore to explore the complex issue of ever-expanding process of urbanisation.

There was unsaid consensus among the scholars of various hues that people made the city and the city made people. The opposite, the audiences were told, was also true; people could destroy the city and the city could destroy people not only metaphorically but also literally.

The city worth the name is in fact in a process of perpetual destruction and regeneration. People’s role in making a city was emphasised at the very outset of the conference by its convener when Prof Vandal said: “without people a city or town would be a soulless mass of debris. People make a city happen; they bring it forth, give it character, endow it with art and culture, fulfill aspirations and suffer frustrations”.

The papers presented at different sessions of the conference offered diverse views on myriad aspects of urban life in our globalised world. The range and diversity of topics can be gauged from looking at titles of the papers which included “Art and Immersion: Notes from a Painter (R) Imagining the City by Michal Glikson, Australia, “Seventeen Years in Lahore: A Frenchman’s Life in the Punjabi Capital” by Rehana Lafont, France, “Cycle Sheher: Gender, Freedom and the Bicycle in India” by Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, USA, “Retreating Akhara Culture in Expanding Metropolitan” by Umair Ghani and Amna Yaseen, Lahore, “Spirituality in Beijing and Shanghai” by Prof Dr Shuxi Yin, China, “Tangible Boundaries: The City of Karachi” by Maria Aslam Hyder, Canada,: The Denizens of Mithi: Life in Changing Times” by Dr Khataumal Lohano, Mithi, “Lahore: Depoliticization of Public Spaces” by Qaisar Abbas and Ghiasuddin Pir, Lahore, “Gazing Men, Looking Women: The Eye within the Metropolis” by Bedatri Datta Choudhry, USA, “Urban Governance: Perspective based on Citizens’ Response to Gorkha Earthquake” by Swati Pujari, Nepal, to name a few.

The city’s past is heritage, the present an opportunity and future a dream. But under the structures created by historical conditions resulting in the socio-economic stratification that has embedded inveterate class hostility, the city is heritage is for the so-called well-groomed affluent, an opportunity for the dominant and a dream for the poor.

Scholars are visibly rattled by the question: how to solve the urbanisation conundrum, how to make the city livable that is shared by all?

In a finite world driven by infinite greed, the ideas on developing the city that doesn’t parcel out people into rigid social groups are passé. In highbrow academic circles supported by corporate funding people are subtly treated as an expendable work force and pliable consumers of a portion of what they are forced to produce.

Most of the scholars at the conference agreed that the city was too serious an organism to be left to officialdom and way forward was people’s participation in the process of decision making regarding the use, expansion and management of urban space that defined contemporary life.

In mid twentieth century after the end of the Second World War that had caused a widespread destruction, a German poet had written: “I knew that cities were being built/I haven’t to any/a matter for statistics, I thought, not history/what’s the point of cities built without people’s wisdom”?

Surely, cities without people’s wisdom will be penetrable jungles treaded by all the “civilized” predators that have paw and muscle. But the matter is not as simple as it appears at the surface.

Scholars at the opposite end of the spectrum spring a pertinent question: in the given situation, can people’s participation and input alone solve the multi-dimensional and highly complex issue of urbanisation and city dwelling?

No segment alone, they argue, can offer a solution that is acceptable to all the stakeholders with conflicting interests. Only fresh social contract based on the notion of equity can make economic and cultural contradictions aligned in such a manner that they at least are not degrading for the majority of citizens.