Here is the conclusion to a paper I wrote on city planning in Islamabad. I show some of my analysis and this is a good place to understand some of my reasoning.
"Doxiadis intended
to use the physical tools of city planning to influence the social
atmosphere of the people inhabiting the city. Because of the unique
situation that Pakistan found itself in, Doxiadis found an
opportunity to fully test his theories and design an entirely new
type of city. Pakistan's need to separate their political and
economic spheres seemed perfect for Doxiadis's high modernist,
decentralist, and regionalist ideals. Using building blocks of
categorized sectors connected by vast highways, he sought to
disassemble and reconstruct the society and state of Pakistan. He
designed a city that would cater to the lifestyle of the perceived
future- of rapid, controlled, urban growth and a total reliance on
automobiles. In attempting to reach this vision of the future,
Doxiadis created opportunities for new, unexpected social processes
to emerge.
I
believe the history of Islamabad is important and proves Timothy
Mitchell's theories regarding the relationship between state and
society. In attempting to physically separate the two, consequences
emerged. First, by so radically changing the style of cityscape and
populating it with people who grew up elsewhere, the city planners
disrupted the social fabric of the people who work for the
government. It removed them from their previous homes in typical
Pakistani cities and placed them in a vast concrete file cabinet of a
city. This actually seems to be the point of the city's design, but
this redirection did not always happen as planned. I think that this
has actually hurt the government's ability to perform. As Hull argues
in Government
of Paper,
the Pakistani bureaucracy is so formalized and transparent that it is
actually ineffectual because responsibility is so easily transported
between groups of people. I see the city as a reflection of this
observation: too regulated and categorized to house a people who are
naturally not as formal and distant.
I think that
Islamabad exists in negation of the rest of Pakistan. In trying to
create a new type of city, with new social processes supposedly
following suit, the city makes a statement about the rest of
Pakistan. The city is trying to create a new future by erasing it's
past. Although there are tokens of acknowledgment to south west Asian
culture, with architecture, Islamic monuments, and mosques, the city
is trying to bypass stages of development, enter the modern arena,
and become a world city. It seems clear that the nation state ideal
is still being developed in Pakistan. How can a government legitimize
itself and become a serious presence in Pakistani society if it is
symbolically and physically cut off from the rest of the country? I
see this separation acting in both directions. Because their
lifestyle and physical location are so far removed from the rest of
Pakistan, politicians and bureaucrats can not make the best decisions
for their constituents. On the other hand, the people of Pakistan
have a government that is ineffective, indecisive, and far removed
from the rest of the country in an ultra modern, exclusive city. So
not only does the government not understand its people, the people do
not see respect the government because it is so distant and
ineffectual.
Pakistan's correct
path of development is not for me to say. But from an outside
perspective, the government is not living up to the goals it set for
itself. While it exists in a city that facilitates its semi-peaceful
existence, the rest of Pakistan is suffering from unrest,
underdevelopment, and poor media coverage. I think the government
needs to play a more active and positive role in the lives of its
people. To do this I think that policy makers need to be visible to
society and to have a certain level of direct interactions in order
to fully understand the people's needs.
I have thus come to
the conclusion that it is impossible to entirely plan a city and all
of its social variables. But, we must often study the extremes of a
field in order to understand a correct balance between theory and
practice. Pakistan will undoubtedly increase in global relevance and
by understanding its capital city we can understand some of the
trends, problems, and possible solutions for the nations development."
Do you agree with me? Why or why not?
