The extent to which the Global South will be at the center of the world’s growing urbanization is highlighted in the UN’s World Urbanization Prospects report 2025. With Dhaka predicted to become the world’s largest city by the mid of the century and Karachi predicted to rank in the top 10 by 2030 and the top five by 2050, more than half of the world’s megacities are currently located in Asia and are still growing. Only seven nations—India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Egypt, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—are expected to contribute to the predicted 986 million increase in the world’s population living in cities by 2050, including Pakistan.
This goes beyond simple trivia. This implies that for the next two to three decades, Pakistan and the rest of the Global South will have a significant influence on global development outcomes. The nation’s urban policy will literally influence how the world develops. This will be a problem not only for megacities like Karachi or other big cities like Lahore and Peshawar, but also for the many peri-urban areas and small and medium-sized cities that are truly responsible for the majority of the nation’s present urban growth. The UN research states that integrated planning that views cities, towns, and rural areas as interconnected and interdependent will be necessary for sustainable development in this context of growing urbanization. Quixotically, both urban and rural policies must be developed with one another in mind, even though they may belong to different categories. For example, the research notes that around 60% of the land that has been transformed into urban areas since 1970 was formerly fertile farmland. This has manifested as urban sprawl in Pakistan, where expanding housing societies are engulfing agricultural land. Many farmers are quitting their jobs due to the growing challenges they confront, such as a tight economy and increased climate concerns.
Those who abandon farming or are uprooted by urban sprawl frequently wind up living in metropolitan areas. Resources in Pakistani cities are under stress due to this growing rural-to-urban migration. Therefore, while rural policies to support farmers should be constructed with the growing demand on urban areas in mind, urban policies should be developed to prevent sprawl and relieve some of the burden on cities. Problems like Lahore’s haze and the role that burning crop residue plays in the issue also show how urban and rural areas are interconnected and how climate risks, in particular, are shared. A World Bank study claims that official statistics continue to indicate that only 39% of the nation’s population lives in cities, despite the fact that the actual percentage is closer to 88%. The general helplessness of local administrations, whether urban and rural, contributes to and exacerbates the problems produced by poor data. In order to prevent the nation from becoming a concrete dystopia, all of these problems must be resolved in the upcoming years.