During the industrialization era, cities were becoming the industrial hub and export oriented zones in the United Kingdom. Although the production was done by burning fossil fuels, ultimately harming the environment. But today there are many other ways to get that production done. Basically I want to talk about the real concept of cities.
Our cities today are not given role of providing healthy ground for economic activities to grow and develop. Lets start with a question: Why do people migrate from rural to urban centers? Sure! there has been no single factor to be generalized on the general public. Urban centers are seen as the areas where one can upgrade his/her lifestyle. Facilities like better educational institutes, hospitals, transport facilities, electricity availability, better water and sanitation system and much more. All these facilities in the poor countries are expensive for the locals to avail. These facilities comes with heavy cost associated with them. In our villages, feudal system was once really dominant. Today, it has reduced (this is what we think). But the reality is the hunger for power still prevails in both the poor and rich regions. Anyway, feudal families have bunk of resources with them. They can afford to have the city life. Their emotional cost also becomes lower, as they migrate mostly with there families. Their motive becomes the consumption of luxuries in the city. But what about a poor person, can he/she migrate? If yes, then not for the purpose of availing a luxurious life, but relatively for a better livelihood. No doubt, they migrate so that they can get a job which they think will be better than their previous earning source. Basically, no matter the person is poor or rich; both spend their life time savings for having a better lifestyle in the cities. Cities then become the consumption based economies. People come to the cities to consume a better lifestyle.
Islamabad is the second highest HDI (Human Development Index) scoring city in Pakistan. Major employer in the city is the government civil sector. Apparently, which does not contribute to the production directly. Government job provides major amenities for free to the employee. This is why, people migrate with an incentive to get a government job on priority basis. State employer in Pakistan tend to be risk free as there is hardly any check and balance. People having money to invest, they tend to invest in the property; which is again less risky. This is how, our cities turned into residential hubs instead of becoming economic hubs. Neither public nor private sector invest majorly in the establishment of zones dedicated to the production of goods and services. Actually, our mindset about cities is wrong. We do not perceive cities as the source of economic growth in real terms; by real terms I mean export oriented and value adding economic growth. The faulty concept about cities lead us to the import and consumption based economy. This is the economy we are feeding by getting foreign loans. These loans absolutely are hard to digest for economy like ours. Economy not producing much to compensate for its consumption. Loans then comes with certain terms and conditions, burdening the economy more and more.
If we talk about the solution, we should first revisit the root cause. The issue started with the wrong concept of cities both at the public and private end. Government should incentivize private sector to invest in the the real economy and provide local industry shelter by putting import tariffs on the right things. We need to shift from the raw material producing economy to the value added production based economy. First we have to change our concept about cities and promote innovation and technology by dedicating special zones for not only production but also for the research and technology, inclusive policies to ease the environment for the business community to grow and encourage new startups. These all are our issues and we have to take the responsibility of addressing them on our own.
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