Lahore Master Plan
Core idea
Grid extensions & industrial corridors
Why it matters
Structured explosive growth of Lahore
Description
The 1966 Lahore Master Plan was prepared for the rapidly growing Punjabi metropolis under the Lahore Improvement Trust with technical approaches strongly influenced by Doxiadis Associates, then active across Pakistan. It projected orderly gridded extensions of the city, designated industrial corridors, and a road framework intended to structure the absorption of migrants and refugees into serviced residential schemes.
Significance
The plan belongs to the wave of consultant-shaped master planning in postcolonial South Asia, applying ekistic grid-expansion ideas to a historic city growing at explosive rates. Its serviced-plot extensions set the template for Lahore's later housing schemes and real-estate-driven growth, while the gap between plan and informal reality has made it a recurring case in critiques of master planning in the Global South.
What shaped it
- Ekistics (1968)
- The grid (c. 2500 BCE)
- The master plan (early 20th c.)
Plans it influenced
- Karachi Development Plan 2000 (1973–2000)
Sources
- https://lda.gop.pk/website/images/final_report_volume_i.pdf
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S026483772100332X