IJIA 2 (1) pp. 125–156 Intellect Limited 2013

International Journal of Islamic Architecture Volume 2 Number 1 © 2013 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ijia.2.1.125_1

Ahmed Z. Khan KU-Leuven

On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space: The Long Marches and the Reincarnation of the ‘Forecourt’ of the Pakistani Nation

Abstract Keywords The rise in the political power of social media technologies has led to claims public space about their democratizing and empowering functions. On the one hand, the co-production a-spatial theorization of this ‘rise’ undermines the value and role of public space. On design the other, it raises questions about traditional ways of conceptualizing this space. place-making With the intention of broadening the concept of public space, this article investigates long march key socio-political processes behind temporal events like the ‘long march’ or Occupy new media movements, and how spatial forms of streets and public spaces interact in producing the image, value and meaning of public space. I assemble a theoretical framework in order to analyse a specific case: the ‘long marches’ and reincarnation of the ‘fore- court’ of the Pakistani nation that materialized in three public spaces in , Lahore and Islamabad. By focusing on the spatiality of contemporary long marches, my analyses carefully unravels the intertwinement of design and politics in socio- spatial … these public spaces, and concludes that social processes and spatial forms co-define each other.

Introduction There is a growing consensus around the universal need for public space in cities to enhance the quality of public life.1 Inclusive and accessible public space constituted by networks of streets, plazas, squares, parks and other open spaces

125

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 125 2/18/13 6:38:33 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

support human interaction, social integration and tolerance.2 Their presence is crucial for social movements that struggle to deepen the roots of democracy and create new, more egalitarian forms of sociality.3 Such spaces impart social and symbolic values by contributing to psychological well-being or, more broadly, by furthering the possibility for ‘democratic ideals, good citizenship, a sense of freedom, civic pride and responsibilities’.4 However, since the last decade, the conceptualization of values commonly associated with public space has witnessed some fundamental shifts.5 These shifts mainstream a ‘narrative of loss’ that highlights the shrinking and erosion of ‘public space’ traditionally based on the distinction between public and private realms.6 In particular, the rise in the political power of ‘new social media’ technologies that aid the ‘new social movements’ (events, Occupy movements, long march, etc.), and their claimed democratizing and empowering functions, raise questions about traditional conceptualizations of public space.7 The a-spatial theorization of this ‘rise’ that undermines the value and role of public space is the broader problematic that frames this article. With an increasingly networked population, social media offers an enhanced capability to coordinate collective action and has become a wide- spread fact of life for civil society worldwide.8 The oft-cited example of social media’s increased political power is the ouster of Joseph Estrada in the Philippines in 2001, when Estrada himself blamed ‘the text-messaging gener- ation’ for his downfall. Since then, the Philippines’ strategy with enhanced social media tools has faced successes, as well as failures.9 However, what is clearly evident in many of these events – the Arab spring (December 2010–), the Justice Movement in Pakistan (March 2007–), Occupy and other new social movements – is the coordinated use of social media and physical occu- pation, the temporary appropriation and claiming of public spaces in achiev- ing political objectives and the enhancement of values traditionally associated more singularly with public space. But the way these particular ‘events’ shape the image and meaning of public space, and the manner in which the design of public space provides opportunities for participation and appropriation, remains understudied. Exploring this interaction implies broadening the concept of public space itself: the intertwinement of design and politics in socio-spatial dialectics and the role of new media in co-producing the image and meaning of public space. In this regard, this article contributes by presenting relevant theoretical analysis and empirical investigations of the ‘long march’ and the reincarnation of the ‘forecourt’ of the Pakistani nation. The ‘long march’ is a peculiar phenomenon in Pakistani politics. From a broader historical perspective, the term ‘long march’ is usually understood as the phenomenon that began the ascent to power of Mao Zedong during the communist revolution in China (1934–36).10 From then on, the term has acquired a meaning that broadly denotes mobilization of the masses for political change. In the Pakistani context, its history is in parallel with that of the restoration of democracy since the 1990s.11 Used mostly as a mobiliz- ing instrument by opposition parties to pressurize the government to gain quasi-political objectives, it has also been accredited with deepening the polit- ical and democratic process. Most recently, the long march was deployed by lawyers in the Justice Movement to oust the military General Musharraf in 2008. As such, the long march now symbolizes the ‘agency for change’ in the Pakistani political consciousness.12 From a spatial perspective, the physical locus of the long march usually oscillates between three specific public spaces in three cities: the ‘Jinnah

126

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 126 2/18/13 6:38:34 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Mausoleum’ square and park in Karachi; the ‘Minar-e-Pakistan’ square and park in Lahore; and the ‘Parliament Square’ in the capital Islamabad. The first two often serve as the staging point and the last one as the culminat- ing point of the long march. There is a rather fascinating and untold story behind this appropriation of these three public spaces by the long marches. These places are the physical manifestation of a specific idea: the ‘forecourt of the Pakistani nation’ – a politically charged design slogan incorporated in the 1952 design proposal for Karachi’s new capital complex by the Swedish firm MRV. In this conceptualization, new modern monuments and spaces would be produced to serve as tangible and reproducible icons of the emergent nation. Despite the fact that this proposal was not immediately implemented, less than a decade later four international architects were commissioned by the autocratic regime of Ayub Khan (who ruled between 1958–69) to mate- rialize the same idea in these three locations. They were constructed simul- taneously during the 1960s.13 Over the years, the image of these three public spaces remained as passive instruments of state representation seeking politi- cal legitimacy, largely ceremonial, and symbolizing a patriotic gaze that hardly went further than evoking a bygone era. In Lefebvrian terminology, they were the epitome of ‘abstract’ spaces.14 But this perception began to change radi- cally with the unfolding of the long march phenomenon that gradually turned them into political ‘spaces of appearance’.15 This article analyses the spatiality of the long marches and unravels the ways in which they transformed the ‘image’ and ‘publicness’ of these three public spaces. Next to a specifically developed theoretical framework for such analy- sis, it is based on primary archival material, historical documents and contem- porary discourse related to the three public spaces and the story of the long march. In these analyses, I address the following questions. What is the role of these public spaces and the long march in redefining the idea of ‘the forecourt’ of the nation? What is the role of design, and embodied ‘sensorial experiences’ characteristic of these spaces that motivate individuals to participate? How have the long marches appropriated these spaces that led to the transformation of their images? I pay particular attention to the design of these spaces in order to reflect upon the contemporary urban design discourse and argue that social processes and spatial forms co-define each other while producing and remak- ing the image and meaning of public space.

Understanding Public Space: A Theoretical Overview In its traditional conception, public space is seen as a ‘realm of the collective’ that is dichotomous to the ‘realm of the private’ household or individual.16 Understanding public space in this sense implies understanding the concept of ‘public life’ that is inseparable from the idea of a ‘public sphere’ and the notion of ‘civil society’, where the affairs of the public are discussed and debated in public places.17 However, both the public and private realms are implicated in the production of space. In addition, public space is a layered concept that does not easily shed earlier meanings associated with it, despite having changed over time. This is particularly true from a western historical perspec- tive, where the concept of public space is seen as a realm where democracy is ‘worked out’, and offering an arena for a rising class faction to articulate itself against the dominant system, e.g. the eighteenth-century feudal state.18 Such a view undergirds the modern discourse, such as Hannah Arendt’s analysis (1958) of the ancient polis and Jürgen Habermas’s analysis (1989)

127

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 127 2/18/13 6:38:34 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

of the early modern bourgeois public sphere as situations characterized by a ‘rich public life’ and a golden age of the ‘public sphere’, respectively.19 As argued by Ali Madanipour, both Arendt and Habermas saw ‘the rigid routines of [the] industrial city as alienating, with the degradation of the qualities of public life, resulting in a false romanticization of historic public spaces’.20 This idea of ‘alienating influences’ has been a recurrent theme in the conceptuali- zation of the public sphere overwhelmed by consumerism, the media, migra- tion and the intrusion of the state into private life. This thematic focus along with the notion of a rigid dichotomy between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ has continued to underpin mainstream approaches.21 As a result, a ‘narrative of loss’ has not only dominated the theorization of public space across many disciplines but it has also fuelled the reconceptualization and development of a new discourse of public space.22 This narrative of loss is chiefly associated with decline in the public realm and the erosion of public space ‘characterized by […] some focusing on the public space and public life, others on aspects of social capital and civil society’.23 However, an emerging counter-critique has responded to this contemporary theorization of public space as characterized by this ‘narrative of loss’. This response has been most productive in providing insights that demonstrate the futility of seeing the public and the private, the design and the politics, the social and the spatial in separate categories for conceptualizing public space.24 The main theoretical concern of this article is to analyse these various strands from the perspective of ‘public space and public life’ in relation to the rise of the political power of new social media and virtual and electronic spaces. While broadening the concept of public space, these analyses lead towards the development of a specific theoretical framework employed in the subse- quent sections for analysing the spatiality of long marches. Efforts to theorize the ‘public space and public life’ relationship are increas- ingly inspired by Lefebvre’s notion of the ‘social production of space’, his concep- tual triad of spatial orders and the closely related concept of ‘place-making’ with its focus on ‘everyday life’ and ‘lived experiences’ that contest traditional conceptions of public space.25 Seeing place-making as an interaction between urban design and public life – a crucial link for broadening the concept of public space – has a specific conceptual history in the theory of urbanism. Theories of spatial form and physical determinism (Gordon Cullen) and those stressing the psychology of place (Christopher Alexander or Kevin Lynch) have been progressively synthesized by focusing on the ‘street life and activ- ity’ (Jane Jacobs) and ‘life between buildings’ (Jan Gehl),26 which led Peter Buchanan to comment that: ‘Urban design is essentially about place-making, where places are not just a specific space, but all the activities and events which made it possible’.27 Theorizing public space through the lens of ‘place-making’ also offers a productive dialogue across disciplines.28 It renders space central to socio- spatial analysis as a ‘layered concept’ that is ‘always specific, unique and in the making’.29 Moreover, it confronts Lefebvre’s notion of space with the importance of ‘materialities’ that produce connectivity and meaning through embodied sensorial experiences in urban public space.30 Space, place and use, thus, are increasingly seen as interwoven socio-spatial processes, the dialectics of which ‘influence each other, co-producing space in a dialectical movement where the experiencing human being is in a central position’.31 These theo- retical developments show the futility of isolating the spatial from the social and design from politics. They introduce a ‘narrative of possibilities’ through

128

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 128 2/18/13 6:38:34 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

multifaceted, ‘every day’ and ‘experiential’ urbanisms.32 This new narrative broadens the concept of public space by analysing the socio-spatial dialec- tics of ‘place-making’ and ‘social capital formation’ through categories such as ‘accessibility and inclusiveness’, ‘experiential quality’, ‘atmospheres’, ‘public- ness’ and ‘livability’.33 However, the theorization of public space in relation to the rise of the political power of new social media and virtual/electronic space is character- ized by an ambivalent consensus. Most scholars acknowledge the transforma- tive power of the new social media tools and technologies that help construct virtual platforms allowing individuals and communities to form ‘imagined social relations across time and spatial distances’.34 But many others question their capacity for improving the values traditionally associated with the notion of public space.35 Some see the dizzying pace of expanding electronic space as a further erosion of the public sphere.36 Others believe that new social media has completely dissolved the dichotomy between public and private space.37 Other exploratory strands explore the possibilities of co-producing new modes of social agency, sociability and reinventing the concept of public space.38 Among these various strands, there is an increasing sense that modes of ‘social interaction constitute a “rich” public culture’ and that ‘different media platforms and interfaces might promote new modes of social agency in public space’.39 Thus, an emergent appreciation for the entanglement of social, spatial and electronic practices is not only broadening the concept of public space, but also replacing the ‘narrative of loss’ as the dominant mode of thinking in the field.

Towards an Analytical Framework for Reconceptualizing Public Space Design and politics, spatial form and social processes, new social media and electronic space are increasingly intertwined in co-producing the image and meaning of public space. This implies that, for example, temporal events such as long marches have an impact on the use, perception and meaning of the public spaces but that this impact and the resulting change is not autono- mously produced by the event itself. Rather, it is co-produced by the interac- tion between the social and historical context and processes that triggered the political event, the role of new media, and the embodied sensorial experiences evoked by design and spatial form of the public spaces. Therefore, I argue that design and politics, space and place cannot be viewed in isolation from lived experiences and other contextual specificities that allow for the co-production of new forms of sociability and for reinventing the concept, image and mean- ing of public space. In this line of thinking, the focus on image and meaning is deliberate and normative. They enhance ‘experiential quality’ and the forma- tion of ‘spatial capital’.40 Moreover, by focusing on the design and meaning of public space we can understand their cultural and political significance.41 Such meanings are co-produced and can be uncovered by analysing the historical, political and sociocultural context of the development of public space.42 To uncover the production of meaning in the three public spaces exam- ined in this article, I undertake a three-stage analysis. First, I situate each case in its historical, socio-spatial and political context; second, I examine the various design concepts, strategies and articulations associated with each; and finally I study the negotiated transformation of each case over time. In these analyses, two specific interrelated analytical concepts are

129

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 129 2/18/13 6:38:35 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

employed as a framework: ‘sensorial experiences’ and ‘image’; and ‘public- ness’ and ‘co-production’. By sensorial experiences, I mean a ‘more-or-less [intended and] direct effect of the design’ that can be experienced through senses as part of the everyday practice of those who interface with and use it.43 They are intimately intertwined with ‘perceptual memories’ that medi- ate the experience in various ways: ‘by multiplying, judging and dulling the sensory encounter’.44 Therefore, I use the sensorial experience in rela- tion to the building-up of image, where ‘image’ is understood as the combi- nation of ‘identity’ (‘as an objective quality, what a place is actually like’) and how a place is perceived (the set of feelings and impressions about the place).45 By ‘publicness’, the wide variation in the degrees of access, actor and interest is implied, a concept that analyses the tension between ‘exclu- sivity and inclusivity’ of a given space.46 Therefore, it is linked with, and allows assessing the modalities of, ‘co-production’.47 Inspired by Lefebvre’s notion of ‘production of space’, here ‘co-production’ is used in two ways: as an analytical category to analyse the intertwinement of design and politics, spatial form and social processes, new social media and electronic space; and as a normative concept that stresses the participation and inclusive produc- tion of space mediating a variety of interests and involving citizens in the conception, materialization and management of public space.

Imagining National Public Space In 1947, Pakistan was, in Emerson’s phrase, ‘not yet a nation in being but only in hope’.48 On the one hand, historical time was partitioned as colonial and postcolonial.49 On the other hand, the creation of Pakistan produced a discon- tiguous geographical national space: West (the present-day Pakistan) and (Bangladesh since 1971), separated by 1,200 miles [Figure 1]. Historical anxiety was overlaid with the cartographic one. In the first four

Glenn V. Stephenson, ‘Pakistan: Discontiguity and the Majority Problem’, Geographical Review 58.2 (1968): 196. Figure 1: Discontiguous territoriality of Pakistan with the separation of East from by 1,230 miles as it emerged in 1947.

130

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 130 2/18/13 6:38:42 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

years alone until 1951, about 7.3 million Muslims fled intercommunal violence and migrated towards Pakistan, with 48 per cent seeking the towns.50 Thus, in post-independence Pakistan, towns and cities came to experience a massive influx of immigrants. Moreover, Pakistan’s ostensible identity as an Islamic state posed formidable challenges because it was imagined to be more than a physical and legal entity. Pakistan was conceived of as an extraordinary state, a homeland for Indian Muslims and an ideological and political leader of the Islamic world that would provide welfare, order and justice to its citizens. This idealized notion began to compete with other visions of an Islamic state51 and with the notion of a new country but an old nation that stretched back to the Indus Valley civilization.52 As models, two traditions became favourable, the 100-year-long British colonial legacy seen as a door to western modernity; and the Muslim legacy in the subcontinent spanning over eight centuries that began to chart its own modernity and intellectual culture.53 In contrast, the new state rejected any association with Hindu .54 These dualities began to be negotiated in a complex relationship between Pakistan, the state – a physically discontiguous territory with a legal and international personality – and Pakistan, the idealized nation, which sought to serve as a ‘beacon for oppressed Muslim communities elsewhere in the world’.55 The process of imagining the national public sphere was embedded largely in the political and intellectual debates among the Pakistani leadership and state elites, who aimed at articulating and refining the concept of Pakistani nation- hood. These debates were also intertwined with the processes of state-building, including a new federal structure, constitution, capital project and national symbols.56 Among these, the new capital project became a pronounced spatial representation of this imagination process. Pakistan chose Karachi as the new but, temporary, capital. It was an obvious choice because it evoked an image of a metropolitan and international city; a high-density, multi-class social and ethnic mix contributing to a rich public culture and a cosmopolitan urbanity.57 However, Karachi was also perceived as ‘badly situated for a capital, having a very hot and humid climate and a hinterland of desert’, a congested urban area, dilapidated buildings, land speculation and thus ‘ceased to function in an urban sense […] the city had been transformed into a “melee”’.58 Several successive plans were made in an attempt to transform the image and identity of Karachi, such as Swayne-Thomas’s ‘Karachi Preliminary Scheme 1948’, the Swedish firm MRV’s ‘Greater Karachi Plan 1952’ and Doxiadis’s ‘Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan 1958’.59 These plans were centred around two alternative models: to house the federal government functions as part of the densification of the core; and to build a capital as a standalone monument, 20–30 miles away from Karachi.60 The first scheme reflected the latter alternative, which was backed by Sir Patrick Abercombie as the government’s advisor.61 It soon attracted severe criticism by opponents, who believed in close contact between bureaucracy and business life for devel- oping stronger bonds between the state and the nation of Pakistan. This led to the commissioning of the MRV plan62 with the clearly stated ambition that the capital as ‘the forecourt of the nation’ would,

[…] manifest to the people of Pakistan and to the world the ideal for which the state stands. The vision and fate of the nation will be materi- alized by artistic and architectural means. The impression given by the capital will, among other factors, depend on the grouping and concen- tration of the most important buildings.63

131

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 131 2/18/13 6:38:42 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

Sten Nilsson, The New Capitals of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Lund: Curzon Press, 1973), 140–41. Figure 2: The idea of the forecourt of the nation – the monumental ambition of the MRV plan in their proposed capitol complex at Karachi in 1952.

The MRV plan translated the discursive idea of the nation’s forecourt into a monumental and design-based public space at the heart of their scheme for the new capital city.64 This space and the existing Central Business District (CBD, Saddar area) were to form one common core extending a main axis connecting the old city.65 The forecourt is spatially articulated as a large hexagonal open space, with a monument laid to immortalize the legacy of the founder of the nation (M.A. Jinnah’s Mausoleum) as a focal point [Figure 2], and a ‘crescent’-shaped pool and a ‘star’-shaped fountain in the middle evoking sensorial experiences related to national symbolism.66 The hexagon is enclosed by a linear strip of blocks on five sides – for govern- ment buildings – and on the sixth side is the principal mosque. With such a spatial form, scale and symbolic signs, the scheme articulates a concept of national public space mediating multiple dualities. It embodies strong and intended sensorial effects and evokes a sense of history, national pride and an ambivalent modernism. The scale is simply enormous; the ceremonial axis is more than one mile longer than Raj Path in New Delhi, with each side of the hexagon measuring 1,400 feet; the enclosed space was meant to hold over a million people.67 There is no presidential palace, rather the symbolic as well as the real focus of the capitol complex is Jinnah’s Mausoleum. The main axis was intended to guide the city’s expansion in seven directions forming large districts with neighbourhoods centred on schools, mosques and shops accessible within walking distance [Figure 3]. This design entailed massive public transportation measures, together with the resettling of refugees in ten-storey flats on the land that they occupied in the city centre so that they could participate in the production of this new public realm.68 In the then Pakistani political culture, however, the MRV plan immediately attracted criticism for its ‘unrealistic and extravagant civic centre’, and exuber- ant publicity-conscious references to fashionable models such as ‘Palm Beach and Copacabana’.69 With dwindling support exacerbated by political

132

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 132 2/18/13 6:38:48 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Sten Nilsson, The New Capitals of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Lund: Curzon Press, 1973), 142. Figure 3: Karachi – the expansion of the city as proposed by the MRV Greater Karachi Plan.

instability, the MRV plan also met the same fate as that of the Swayne- Thomas plan. Regardless, the expansion strategies of both plans ended up providing a general idea for the later development of Karachi. Most impor- tantly, however, the MRV plan’s forecourt with Jinnah’s Mausoleum was eventually implemented ten years later by the new military regime of Ayub Khan. A symbol of the unfulfilled ambitions of Karachi in becoming a capital, this mausoleum-cum-city-park would become the city’s largest public space and greatest landmark.

Designing Public Space: Autocratic Regime and Modernizing Ambitions Beyond the 1950s, the notion of the ‘Islamic republic’ increasingly became an outer garment for the inner workings of a modern and secular state in Pakistan.70 Initially, the space of the ‘imagined community’71 of the nation was seen as ‘a site over which claims to political identity and representation are contested’.72 With the rise of the authoritarian regime in the late 1950s, however, the idea of a national space assumed the mediation of state-building and nation-building in order to secure legitimacy with an agenda of modern- izing an old nation in the guise of consolidating a new state. Such rhetoric was employed by the new military regime in alliance with the bureaucracy to claim the ‘governmentality’ as well as ‘disciplinary’ power from the politi- cal sphere.73 Their tactics included portraying the ‘democratic parliamentary system’ as a ‘disorganized and chaotic way’ of running the state, maligning the politicians in the eyes of the public as ‘corrupt’, ‘inefficient’ and responsi- ble for the ‘political instability’.74 The military–bureaucracy alliance imagined achieving a modern, progressive and developed Pakistan through scientific- technocratic-rational planning under a stable political set-up, i.e. an auto- cratic regime. On October 7, 1958, President Iskander Mirza was the first

133

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 133 2/18/13 6:38:51 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

to proclaim, ‘My authority is revolution […] I have no sanction in law or constitution.’75 Twenty days later, the Army chief General Ayub Khan moved against Mirza, packed him off to exile in England, and assumed the office of the President. With the intention of bringing a self-proclaimed ‘revolution’, he announced his cabinet composed of three military officials, eight civilians including a young politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and a planning commission that he headed himself. Thus began the second role of the military through the bloodless coup(s), as the self-appointed guardian of domestic affairs of the state as well as the defender against external enemies.76 With the less accountable autocratic regime in place, the decision-making process sped up. The refugee-housing problem was addressed within six months when the Greek architect/planner Doxiadis’s ‘Greater Karachi Resettlement Plan’ was approved and half a million refugees were housed in the newly constructed Korangi area of the plan. In parallel, over three dozen reform commissions were constituted to modernize the state, its economy and to reinvent the history and future of Pakistan. Large-scale spatial restructuring and projects across the discontiguous territory began to unfold what histo- rians dub as the ‘green revolution’ of the 1960s in Pakistan. Among them, the Jinnah Mausoleum, Minar-e-Pakistan and the federal capital project were significant in reinventing the idea of national public space.

The Jinnah Mausoleum While the idea of the Jinnah Mausoleum was first presented in the 1952 MRV plan, its foundation stone was laid by Ayub Khan on July 31, 1960.77 A lot happened during these eight years. Jinnah, the man who achieved his ambition of creating Pakistan, was buried on a rocky barren hillock and for years after- wards ‘his grave lay covered by a tent. Architects came and went, discussions were held, suggestions made, draft plans drawn up and destroyed.’78 Ayub Khan’s involvement unfolded yet another attempt: the International Union of Architects in Paris was approached to organize an international competi- tion and a jury of world-renowned architects was set up to judge the entries. Fifty-seven entries were received and the jury selected a design submitted by Raglan Squire and Partners of London.79 Squire’s winning design proposed a modern structure in the shape of a hyperbolic paraboloid pavilion that seemed to float in the air, a sensorial effect heightened by the reflecting pools surrounding the edifice.80 However, the design soon became controversial and initiated a debate in the local press and other forums, some arguing for tradition, which in this case referred to evocative Mughal or characteristic Islamic forms, and others supporting its modernist credentials.81 Finally, it was Jinnah’s revered sister Fatima who stepped in and prevailed over the debate in rejecting Squire’s design: ‘No domes? No minarets? No fancy furbelows?’82 At her insistence, Yahya Merchant, an architect from Bombay who had designed Mr Jinnah’s house on in Bombay in the 1930s, was brought in to design his eternal resting place.83 The 61-acre site of the Mausoleum as marked by the MRV plan was reconceived as a city park. The design of Yahya Merchant encloses the quad- rangular area [Figure 4] with the Mausoleum building slightly off-centre, placed on a 12-foot high platform measuring 300 x 275 feet. The approach to the Mausoleum is a terraced/landscaped path lined by fountains, and a rising slope that is ‘a deliberate contrivance to make the visitors feel the grandeur of the monument and realize the greatness of the man buried high up’.84 The

134

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 134 2/18/13 6:38:51 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Yahya C. Merchant (4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d) and Google Earth (4e, accessed on August 17, 2007). Figures (left to right and top to bottom): 4a: Original plans of Jinnah Mausoleum, Elevation; 4b: Elevation and side section; 4c: Site plan; 4d: View; 4e: Satellite image, 2006.

135

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 135 3/1/13 8:27:37 AM Ahmed Z. Khan

edifice measures 27 metres by 27 metres at the base. It features tapering walls, surmounted by a dome with a diameter of 21 metres, and rises to a height of 43 metres, with arches opening from each of the four facades. A ‘frustum of a square pyramid’ with perfect symmetry and tapered massive walls, the edifice is a solid mass that is smoothed by the soft white of the marble cladding: ‘standing all alone, clad in white in the purity of its soul, erect and firm, to console and inspire’.85 A ceremonial sarcophagus is located at the centre of an octagonal space, with the actual tomb in a subterranean chamber immediately underneath. The Mausoleum is ‘a strangely old-fashioned edifice’ which evokes echoes of Mughal architecture – a ‘sensible’ reinterpretation of the tradition for the national monument of a modern state.86 Obviously, the emphasis is on evok- ing the greatness of Jinnah standing ‘out high in the living memory of his faithful followers’. With its dominant traditional elements and proportions, the architectural composition mimics the traditional garden tomb (rauzah) of the Muslim subcontinent tradition, where most of the Mughal emperors and their loved ones are buried in massive introverted structures surrounded by gardens.87 In contrast to the Mughal gardens, however, the original design offers a modernist articulation of the surrounding landscape, which has been gradually changing, and completely transformed into a traditional pattern during the Musharraf era of the early 2000s.

Minar-e-Pakistan (Pakistan Tower, Iqbal Park) The city of Lahore carries a different resonance in the national imagination. The Minar-e-Pakistan, completed in 1968, was meant to commemorate the historic space where the ‘Lahore Resolution’ – that spelled out the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent – was tabled and accepted in 1940. Murat Khan, a Lahore-based architect of central Asian and Turkish origins, was appointed as the designer who conceived a 60-metre high tower [Figure 5] in the middle of a vast garden. The garden was named after the poet/philosopher as Iqbal Park, which is adjacent to the monumental part of the historic city of Lahore. Placed on a four-metre raised platform, the tower has a five-pointed star-shaped base surrounded by a double crescent-shaped pool. The lower 13-metre section of the tower is a sculpted flower-like form. Evoking a subcontinental tradition of minaret design, the tower tapers as it rises to its full height. Structurally, the tower is constructed in reinforced concrete, with the floors, internal stairs and walls rendered in stone and marble. The Minar-e-Pakistan, like the Jinnah Mausoleum, also uses the literal imagery of the crescent and star shapes. They are signs derived from the national flag – signs that symbolically represent the cultural orientation of the Islamic ummah – and also used in most of the official insignias and logos of the state. Both projects share a similar traditional idea of monumentality featuring an introvert form placed on raised platforms and surrounded by park-like settings with fountains and water channels. However, dualities of their design – i.e. placing a symmetrical building asymmetrically in the park, a synthesis of massiveness and softness through architectural devices in the Jinnah Mausoleum – are also representative of the political dualities in the process of state-making. Moreover, the rejection of Squire’s modernist design in favour of a local (Indian) architect, and employing modern construction for traditional building forms, represents an attempt to reclaim the thousand- year-old Muslim architectural legacy of the subcontinent, and also unfolds

136

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 136 2/18/13 6:39:17 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Muhammad Wali Ullah Khan (5a, 5b, 5c and 5d) and Google Earth (5e, accessed on August 17, 2007). Figures (left to right and top to bottom): 5a: Minar-e-Pakistan, Section drawing; 5b: Photograph; 5c: Front elevation; 5d: Iqbal Park from the monument; 5e: Satellite image showing the location of the monument in relation to the old city of Lahore.

137

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 137 3/1/13 8:28:23 AM Ahmed Z. Khan

that tradition as increasingly becoming an outer garment for the inner work- ings of a modern secular state.

Parliament Square in Islamabad The implicit geographic discontiguity of the national space was dealt with by assigning two capitals in which the parliament would rotate sessions. In Dhaka in East Pakistan, Louis Kahn was commissioned and Doxiadis was appointed for the new capital city of West Pakistan named Islamabad near Rawalpindi. Both architects produced entirely different solutions to the prob- lem of state representation, although western classical and modernist inspi- rations were at the heart of each. Numerous studies also point out that Kahn’s capitol complex in Dhaka [Figure 6] drew influences from Mughal garden design and tomb architecture.88 Kahn’s design produced an isolated ‘citadel’ assembly-building complex in the middle of a large park. The citadel is located on a raised platform surrounded by a crescent-shaped pool, and its massive volume is broken down into several surfaces for creating the sensorial effects of light and shade. Surprisingly, Kahn’s design adheres to the monu- mental ambition of an introverted form used in the Jinnah Mausoleum and the Minar-e-Pakistan, placed in the centre of a large park. However, Doxiadis’s design introduced a different notion of monumental- ity and approach to the problem of national public space. Doxiadis was the master planner for the new capital city and the urban designer for the main capitol complex in Islamabad, which was conceived as a metropolis of three million inhabitants [Figure 7].89 His intention in the latter was to synthesize the scale of the state – the administrative (executive, legislative and judicial) functions of the federal government – with the scale of the city, consisting of residential areas and a CBD, in a compact core [Figure 8] representative of the national public space. This core also forms the starting point of his gradually widening linear city concept of ‘dynapolis’.90 Doxiadis’s urban design scheme [Figure 9] places the main buildings (presidential palace, parliament building, supreme court, etc.) in front of the central axis emanating towards the CBD.91 Administrative buildings are accommodated in the two side wings. Pedestrian esplanades run along them, with squares and plazas placed at intervals and

Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Figure 6: Capitol complex in Dhaka – Louis Kahn’s Citadel.

138

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 138 2/18/13 6:40:02 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

DA-A (Doxiadis Archives – Athens), and CDA-A (Capital Development Authority – Archives, Islamabad). Figure 7: Doxiadis´s Final Master Plan of 1960 for the Islamabad Metropolitan area.

DA-A and CDA-A (Report no. DOX-PA 78, p. 91). Figure 8: Islamabad – Representation of the State in Capitol complex; Chief Executive in relation to the three powers; and the Capitol and central sector of the city starting from the same point.

139

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 139 2/18/13 6:40:22 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

DA-A and CDA-A (Report no. DOX-PA 89, pp. 119 (9a), 125 (9b), 127 (9c) and 129 (9d)). Figures (from top to bottom): 9a: Islamabad, A model of the final proposal for the Administrative complex, looking from south to north; 9b, 9c, and 9d: Its schematic programme.

140

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 140 3/1/13 8:29:13 AM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

named after the buildings around them.92 These linear esplanades culminate in a huge public space (the Parliament square which is approximately 500,000 metres square) with main avenues and parking facilities underneath. Doxiadis’s scheme presents a hybrid synthesis; the presidential palace evokes ‘acropolis’, whereas the interior courtyards and the several squares reflect some variations on the themes of ‘agora’ and ‘forums’. The open space system, i.e. the voids of public spaces, squares, esplanades and courtyards, becomes the main structure that organizes the buildings. The ‘solid’ of the buildings act as ‘infill’ in order to produce a sustained socio-spatial dialogue. This solid–void dialectic transcends the ‘tradition–modern’ city debate by bringing the qualities of both to the synthesis.93 The transition from the monu- mentality of the capitol complex to the ordinary scale of the residential area is mediated through the system of open spaces and gradual softening from the coarse to finer grain of the built volumes. This gradual transition creates several in-between scales of spaces that preserve human scale and open a diversity of views towards the majestic landscape of hills. Such articulation of the solids and voids with openings towards the surrounding landscape unfolds a sensorial experience that evokes a certain nature–city integration considered necessary for enhancing the citizen’s sense of well-being, and facilitates the unfolding of a variety of modes of sociability and urbanity.94 The large public space of the Parliament square was to serve the ‘inter- relationship’ between the different functions of the capitol complex and the city as its ‘symbolic monumental centre’.95 The Parliament square becomes a project of intended ‘space of appearance’ – a place for challenging, protesting and contesting, where state–citizen interaction could be mediated. This func- tionality, embedded in its conception and position combined with its capacity to hold over half a million people, is one that was never fully materialized. In contrast to this supposed centrality of the Parliament square, other elements of the nation state, leadership, administration, wealth, military command, political legitimacy and symbolism are perhaps no longer synonymous. They are separated and dispersed throughout the various buildings of the admin- istrative complex. The parliament, ministries, supreme court, museums and other state buildings now stand alongside the presidential palace as centres and symbols of national power in the capitol complex. The intended effects of a hybrid synthesis (of classical/traditional elements and modern ones) make the capitol complex a ‘collage’; a befitting environment to facilitate democracy and pluralism in the workings of the national government.96

Negotiating Public Space: Design and Politics of Co-Production Before the long marches began in the 1990s, each of these three public spaces followed a specific trajectory of development in their image and meaning and in their contributions to the public sphere and public life. What these spaces shared in common was the potential for unfolding a high degree of symbol- ism through the ‘sensorial experiences’ of their design qualities that produced a particular image. Their scale, location, formal compositions, iconic postures, spatial articulations, details, orchestrated landscapes and carefully crafted open spaces with a variety of traditional and modern references were able to produce an ambivalent image: a progressive nation state that values its traditions of an illustrious selective past, evoking a sense of awe, national pride and hope in the future. They also shared a certain degree of ‘publicness’: the mausoleum,

141

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 141 2/18/13 6:40:27 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

as a familiar typology, had a long history in people’s perception as a place for all, and so the Jinnah Mausoleum did enclose a wide variety of visitors and users without distinction of class, race or gender. The Minar-e-Pakistan, due to its resemblance to a religious sign (the minaret) and close proximity to the old city of Lahore and the Badshahi Mosque, also remained accessible to all. However, because the space and the buildings around it remained a construc- tion site for over two decades and also because the Pakistani elite are hyper- conscious of security concerns, the Parliament square was cordoned off and even fenced later. Public access remains limited and tightly controlled. The appropriate question to ask of all three public spaces could simply be summarized as, borrowing from Madanipour, ‘Whose public space?’97 In Lefebvrian terminology, these were ‘abstract spaces’ materialized during Ayub’s regime for the often theatrical exercise of ‘raw’ power. As Markus Daechsel’s Foucauldian analysis of political power configuration in Pakistan reveals, the energy of Ayub’s regime was invested in expanding its capacity of economic decision-making and deploying executive power over its territory, ‘but it made no sustained effort to use spatial control to entangle its subjects in a web of “governmentality”’.98 It was only in this context ‘of “raw” sover- eignty and “weak” governmentality that a regime like Ayub’s could justify the continuing maintenance of a state of “exception”’.99 This state of excep- tion, however, reached its tipping point towards the summer of 1968, with the remarkable uprising that toppled Ayub Khan’s regime.100 Led by students and lawyers of villages and small towns, this origi- nally rural movement shifted to large cities, such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad, in late 1968, and arrived in East Pakistan in early 1969.101 By late 1968, Z.A. Bhutto saw the movement as a staging post to declare his independence from Ayub and launch his own political career.102 With Bhutto, the movement gained political organization and charismatic leader- ship resulting in massive rallies in large public spaces of the major cities. Ayub had neither the democratic organizations nor a state of equilibrium between social groups necessary to dissipate the movement. In Shahid Javed Burki’s words: ‘The society blew up and took with it the system that Ayub Khan had so carefully created and nurtured.’103 The momentum of this anti-Ayub movement also bolstered the ongoing nationalist movement in East Pakistan, which became the independent state of Bangladesh only two years later, appropriating Kahn’s designed ‘citadel’ as its capitol complex. For Pakistani politics, both the military regime of Ayub Khan (1958–69) and the movement against him set a precedent of three more military rulers: General Yayha Khan (1969–71), General Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88) and General (1999–2008) – and the restoration of democracy in 1988 that fully reappeared as the ‘long march’ ousting Musharraf’s regime in 2008. Since the collapse of Ayub’s regime, the three public spaces became, in Lefebvrian terminology, ‘spatial practices’ that began to mediate the ‘repre- sentations of space’ and ‘representational space’.104 Due to their location in the heart of the city and as a familiar typology, both the Jinnah Mausoleum and Minar-e-Pakistan experienced active use.105 The Jinnah Mausoleum with its iconic structure, huge park, lush greenery, ponds, channels and fountains of water began to be perceived as an oasis, a place of calmness and tranquil- lity in the bustling metropolis surrounded by a hinterland of desert. It became an excellent outdoor space that the residents of the city use for recreation, picnics and family get-togethers. Minar-e-Pakistan, surrounded by a park and a lake, also became popular in people’s perception. It began to be lived by

142

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 142 2/18/13 6:40:29 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

the residents for family recreation and leisure activities, early morning walks and sports. Its grounds became popular among kite-flyers and the tower top used for enjoying spectacular views of the surrounding city.106 Both places also became popular tourist destinations, their iconic structure(s) used by media, companies and the state on their insignias and logos as markers of iden- tity. Visitors from the rest of the country came in droves to pay homage to the father of the nation and experience the historical moment of the Lahore resolution, as did dignitaries and officials from foreign countries. Spectacular events on special occasions became the hallmark of both places, whether landmark political rallies, public meetings or official celebrations of the state. However, the Parliament square neither became a fully realized ‘space of representation’ nor a ‘representational’ space as such. The construction of major buildings took over two decades, and the parliament building came into active use in the late 1980s, although the large Parliament square with main avenues underneath has not yet materialized [Figure 10]. Thus, although the conceived space exists on the ground, it seems to have ‘dissolved’ or become ‘invisible’; half of its space, which is directly in front of the parliament and the Presidency, has turned into a banal green lawn, fenced and off-limits to the public. The remaining half has transformed into a tarmac-paved stage, normally used for vehicular traffic, with stepped seating on both sides that is used for military parades on national days. All three spaces acquired a specific image through people’s perception: the Jinnah Mausoleum and Minar-e-Pakistan became places that evoked a sense of history, national pride and a feeling of belonging and connection to the imagined community of the Pakistani nation, whereas the Parliament square remained a ceremonial space devoid of any meaning, which only began to change with the rise of the long marches.

The ‘Long Marches’ in Context: Rediscovering Street Power and Public Space Heralded as a social change movement that transformed the Pakistani public sphere, the most recent long march (March 2007–August 2008) not only succeeded in ousting a dictator but also in restoring the supremacy of the judiciary and electing a democratic government [Figure 11].107 Although its trigger came from President Musharraf’s colossal miscalculation of insisting that Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry step down (March 2007) and his subse- quent imposition of a ‘state of emergency’ (November 2007), there are many other factors that produced a gradual erosion of public life.108 They include, for example, a severely constricted public realm and space and moral policing during Zia’s regime (1980s); disillusionment of the masses with politics owing to massive corruption and authoritarian political practices of democratically elected governments of the 1990s; and the rise of yet another dictatorship (and the post-9/11 war on terror related extremism) during which a redefini- tion of the public sphere unfolded through massive violence.109 In contextualizing the history of long marches, and the transformation of the image of the three public spaces, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s are significant in many ways. In particular, the urbanization and increase in public consciousness during the Z.A. Bhutto era from the early 1970s transformed the way urban space was inhabited. Urban spaces became more contested with class and ethnic conflicts, social exclusion and political agitation. But they also became new arenas for shaping intellectual and political culture and spaces of empowerment and emancipation. While still actively appropriated

143

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 143 2/18/13 6:40:29 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

Google Earth (10a, accessed on May 25, 2012) and Ahmed Z. Khan (10b, 10c, 10d, and 10e). Figures (from top to bottom and left to right): 10a: Aerial image of the Parliament Square, Islamabad; 10b, 10c, 10d, and 10e: Parliament Square in its present state.

144

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 144 3/1/13 8:30:25 AM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Dawn (11c), Pkpolitics (11a) and PTI (11b and 11d). Figures (clockwise from top left): 11a: The long march, February 2008; 11b: A political rally at Minar-e-Pakistan, Lahore, October 30, 2011; 11c: A political rally at Parliament Square, Islamabad; 11d: A political rally at the Jinnah Mausoleum, Karachi, December 25, 2011.

by the ruling elite to display their ‘power of the people’, the most spectacu- lar appropriation for political change came during the opposition campaign against Bhutto as a run-up to the 1977 elections. From then on, during Zia’s regime of the 1980s, these spaces began to be strictly guarded, controlled and used for the purposes of state propaganda. They became venues for official celebrations, touring foreign dignitaries and portrayed as recreational spaces for urban residents. Their political role was severely constricted. The general shrinking of the public realm and space, and the moral policing during Zia’s regime gradually transformed their image into apolitical spaces. This began to change towards the end of the 1980s when the democratic process began afresh. It was the dismissal of Benazir Bhutto’s government in 1990, and their challenging of the results of the subsequent elections, that led to the unfold- ing of the first long marches. The former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose were largely lower to lower-middle class, organized the first two long marches on November 16, 1992 and July 16, 1993, respectively. Mainly party workers and leadership participated.110 In between, there were several other mimetic events. For example, the Jamaat-i-Islami – a mainstream religious political party – also enacted a ‘Million Man March’ during the mid-1990s, again a tendentious version of a kind of ‘long march’. While Benazir Bhutto’s first long march failed to achieve her desired purpose, her second attempt reaped partial rewards.111 Two more long marches were undertaken during 2008–09 with the

145

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 145 3/1/13 8:31:42 AM Ahmed Z. Khan

objective of ‘restoring’ and establishing the supremacy of the judiciary, that included the participation of the predominantly middle and upper-middle classes. In all four cases, the culminating point of these long marches was the Parliament square, Islamabad. Both the Jinnah Mausoleum and Minar-e- Pakistan played a staging role. In addition, Jinnah’s tomb has also been a major site of ethnic rallies by the Mohajir Qaumi Movement, a party that claims the representation of an -speaking, Muslim migrant population since the early 1990s.112 Such ethnic rallies and other uses of these public spaces for sectarian politics also show that the image and meaning of these public spaces are not necessarily always based on a progressive and inclusive all-Pakistan vision as the ‘national forecourt’. The second wave of long marches (2008–09) for the restoration of the judiciary had far-reaching consequences compared to the earlier ones described above. In fact, the transformation in the image of these public spaces is owed to the agenda for radical change embedded in these later long marches that began to redefine the meaning of state–citizen relationships and the very essence of Pakistani political culture. In March 2007, it was the Chief Justice’s refusal to President Musharraf’s demand that unleashed a wave of opposition, which had been steadily growing and then found a cause that transcended partisan differences: the independence of the judiciary. For that reason, it is also called the Justice and Lawyers’ Movement.113 In its politi- cal organization and mobilization of people, both the leadership and the new social media played a critical role. The Lawyers’ Association spearheaded the leadership and successfully engaged civil society organizations, students, human rights and social activ- ists, journalists and the country’s opposition political parties. During this period of turmoil and censorship, however, media in Pakistan gravitated towards a hybrid model whereby old (TV and print) and new (mobile phones, live Internet streams, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) media platforms were used to collaborate and coordinate action and to disseminate and keep the public informed of unfolding events.114 Moreover, media was not only able to contest Musharraf’s claims of ‘enlightened moderation’ by showing footage of ‘heads being cracked open, politicians being shot and charges on lawyers’; but also the appearance of movement leaders providing an alternative narrative in various media made a qualitative difference in the movement’s ability to deliver its message and mobilize supporters.115 However, in a country where about 15 per cent of the population have Internet connections and there is only a little over 50 per cent literacy rate, the exaggerated claims that new social media solely and speedily constructed a new ‘social reality’ have been refuted.116 Their role and power in the coordination, dissemination and mobi- lization makes a concrete case in the long march, which only became effective in the sense of producing results once people actually began to demonstrate in those three public spaces. The politics of the long march, as conceived and organized by its leadership in collaboration with media and civil society, can be seen as ‘action centred’, which relied on ‘human togetherness’ in the public realm.117 To bring action and performance together, ‘a definite space had to be secured and a struc- ture built’.118 All three public spaces offered a sensible structure for legiti- mizing and making the long march appear as a truly mass movement; the Parliament square, for its political significance as a culminating point, and the Jinnah Mausoleum and Minar-e-Pakistan for their symbolic relevance as civil society strongholds and staging posts for mobilizing large numbers of people.

146

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 146 2/18/13 6:41:18 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

The performative role of these three spaces became clear in the ‘spaces of appearance’ holding massive displays of ‘human togetherness’. Moreover, their images printed, aired and shared via both old and new media channels began a process of co-producing a new public discourse that mainstreamed the movement and eventually forced Musharraf to resign. Even afterwards, this newly acquired powerful image and transformed meanings of these public spaces was reactivated when President Asif Ali Zardari reneged on an earlier promise to restore the deposed judges. A massive ‘long march’ from Lahore to Islamabad and threatened sit-in in the Parliament square was launched: the long march triumphed even before it arrived in Islamabad, and the next day the Chief Justice was reinstated.119 The shrinking of the public realm in Pakistan is widely acknowledged, wherein ‘citizen apathy, poor governance, and fear of regime repression and terrorist violence are real barriers to effective civic activism inside Pakistan’.120 Yet, people came to the streets and public spaces in droves in response to the call of the ‘men in black’ (an oblique reference to the Lawyers’ Movement). The hearts and minds of millions of were captured by the move- ment’s ‘non-violent struggle’ for the restoration of the judiciary in the face of a powerful and oppressive military regime. The co-production in the movement played an effective role in changing the existing status quo and towards building and disseminating a powerful new discourse of ‘public good’. Starting from small group protests in streets, university campuses and court buildings, the movement gained momentum as hundreds of thou- sands of people began to participate. Active participation was triggered by a shared endeavour of rediscovering street power and public space. Large rallies in big cities were organized to culminate at symbolic places – the Jinnah Mausoleum and Minar-e-Pakistan as obvious choices – where the long march towards Islamabad became a slogan. Sensorial and embodied experiences of the people participating in the ‘just’ cause on the stage of the three most symbolic spaces produced a feeling of ‘empowerment’, an image and meaning of public life that transcended the concerns for personal safety. Little wonder then, like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1968, long marches are once again deployed by another contemporary and rather charismatic leader – Imran Khan and his party, the ‘Pakistan Justice Movement’ – into ‘Tsunami marches’. The first march took place at Minar-e-Pakistan and the second at the Jinnah Mausoleum.121

Conclusion With the intention of broadening the concept of public space, this article analysed the role of ‘events’, in particular the long march, in shaping the image and meaning of actual physical public space. It also examined the way public space, the design of its spatial forms, its values and sensorial effects provides opportunities for participation and appropriation. A specific analytical frame- work guided these analyses, comprised of two sets of interrelated concepts: ‘sensorial experiences’ and ‘image’; and ‘publicness’ and ‘co-production’. These analyses unfold and substantiate a specific understanding that design and politics, space and place, public and private, social process and spatial form, new social media and electronic space are relational categories of analysis. As demonstrated, they are relational not only because they co-define each other, but also because they are intertwined in ‘co-producing’ the image and meaning of public space.

147

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 147 2/18/13 6:41:19 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

Today, after successive achievements and partial failures of the long marches, and the increasing use of new social media for mobilization of the masses, these three public spaces are seen as the locus of change. They are redefining the idea of ‘the forecourt of the Pakistani nation’. Once abstract in Lefebvrian terminology, these spaces are becoming concrete due to changes in their image and publicness. These spaces no longer lend themselves to be characterized or explained through the ‘narrative of loss’ or ‘erosion of the public realm’. They are in the process of making, being redefined and co-produced as a locus of change. Shifts are discernable in their underlying socio-spatial logic. In terms of social processes, a new ‘social consciousness’ is emerging through a performance of togetherness that demands a broader public good, social justice, rule of law, sustained democracy and improved quality of life. People feeling empowered, and thinking change is possible, is also part of this consciousness. However, the ethnic and sectarian rallies – and other more tendentious versions of ‘long marches’ – in these public spaces also point towards the lack of a more pluralist attitude in this collective consciousness. In terms of spatial forms, the experiential quality and image of these public spaces is changing from ‘abstract’ towards spaces of potentially pluralist imaginations and material qualities, where celebration of ordinary people’s political appearance of togetherness is perceived as producing value and meaning in the public realm. It is in this way that both social processes and spatial forms are co-defining each other while producing and remaking the image and meaning of public space. Whether long marches or tsunami marches, co-producing public space remains a pragmatic project; a project that needs to be deepened and broadened for unfolding and sustaining a democratic culture and nourishing civic values of tolerance and coexistence that serves the common good.

Suggested Citation Khan, A. Z. (2013). ‘On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space: The Long Marches and the Reincarnation of the ‘Forecourt’ of the Pakistani Nation’, International Journal of Islamic Architecture 2: 1, pp. 125–156, doi: 10.1386/ijia.2.1.125_1

Contributor Details Trained as an architect (1995) with a decade-long experience in design practice, Ahmed Zaib Khan Mahsud received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Modern Architecture and Urbanism in 2008 from the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is a Visiting Professor and Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Architecture, Urbanism and Planning Department, KU Leuven, and COSMOPOLIS, VU Brussels, where he conducts research on issues of urban form, spatial quality, urban futures and coastal cities in the framework of sustainable urbanism. He has published in several international peer-reviewed journals including Positions, JRAP, Science, Ekistics, IPS, JUD and also held the AKPIA postdoctoral fellowship at MIT in 2008–09. Contact: KU Leuven, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture, Urban Design and Planning, KasteelparkArenberg 51, bus 2429, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected]

148

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 148 2/18/13 6:41:19 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Ahmed Z. Khan has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was submitted to Intellect Ltd.

Endnotes

1. Ali Madanipour, ‘Introduction’, in Whose Public Space? ed. Ali Madanipour (London: Routledge, 2010), 14.

2. Ibid.; Stephen Graham and Alessandro Aurigi, ‘Virtual Cities, Social Polarization, and the Crisis in Urban Public Space’, Journal of Urban Technology 4.1 (1997): 20; Ali Madanipour, ‘Roles and Challenges of Urban Design’, Journal of Urban Design 11.2 (2006): 183.

3. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics’, Public Culture 14.1 (2002): 25; Jeffrey S. Juris, ‘Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere’, American Ethnologist 39.2 (2012): 274; Catharine W. Thompson, ‘Urban Open Space in the 21st Century’, Landscape and Urban Planning 60 (2002): 60.

4. Madanipour, ‘Roles and Challenges’, 187; Tridib Banerjee, ‘The Future of Public Space’, Journal of the American Planning Association 67.1 (2001): 10.

5. Bannerjee, ‘The Future’, 9–10.

6. Ibid., 11–14; Virginia Nightingale, ed. The Handbook of Media Audiences (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

7. Shirky Clay, ‘The Political Power of Social Media’, Foreign Affairs 90.1 (2011): 28–41; Enqi Weng, ‘Observing the Impact of Locative Media on the Public Space of Contemporary Cities’, Polymath 2.2 (2012): 1–10; Petros Iosifidis, ‘The Public Sphere, Social Networks and Public Service Media’, Information, Communication & Society 14.5 (2011): 619–37.

8. Clay, ‘The Political’; Huma Yusuf, ‘Old and New Media: Converging During the Pakistan Emergency’, MIT Future Civic Media, accessed May 28, 2012, http://civic.mit.edu/blog/humayusuf/old-and-new-media-con- verging-during-the-pakistan-emergency-march-2007-february-2008; Ayesha Sadaf, ‘Public Perception of Media Role’, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 1.5 (2011): 228–36.

9. Clay, ‘The Political’, 28–30.

10. Sun Shuyun, The Long March: The True History of Communist China’s Founding Myth (New York: Anchor, 2008).

11. Sabir Shah, ‘A Political Timeline of Long Marches in Pakistan’, The News International, May 2, 2012.

149

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 149 2/18/13 6:41:20 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

12. Sheila Fruman, ‘Will the Long March to Democracy in Pakistan Finally Succeed?’ Peaceworks 73 (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2011): 1–31; Zahid S. Ahmed and Maria J. Stephan, ‘Fighting for the Rule of Law: Civil Resistance and the Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan’, Democratization 17.3 (2010): 492–513.

13. Ahmed Z. Khan, ‘Constantinos A. Doxiadis’ Plan for Islamabad: The Making of a “City of the Future” 1959–1963’ (Ph.D. diss., KU Leuven, 2008): 74–79.

14. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

15. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).

16. Madanipour, Whose Public.

17. Bannerjee, ‘The Future’.

18. Graham and Aurigi, ‘Virtual cities’, 20; Mike Crang, ‘Public Space, Urban Space and Electronic Space’, Urban studies 37.2 (2000): 301–17.

19. Arendt, The Human Condition; Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Jennifer S. Light, ‘From City Space to Cyberspace’, in Virtual Geographies: Bodies, Space, and Relations, ed. M. Crang, P. Crang and J. May (London: Routledge, 1999), 109–30; Graham and Aurigi, ‘Virtual cities’.

20. Madanipour, Whose Public, 6–7.

21. Margaret Crawford, ‘Contesting the Public Realm: Struggles over Public Space in Los Angeles’, Journal of Architectural Education 49.1 (1995): 4–9.

22. Such as Richard Sennett’s lament for ‘the fall of public man’, Michael Sorkin’s and Mike Davis’s announcements of ‘the end of public space’ and the ‘destruction of any truly democratic urban spaces’. Crawford, ‘Contesting’, 1; Bannerjee, ‘The Future’, 11–14; Madanipour, Whose Public; Panu Lehtovuori, ‘Towards Experiential Urbanism’, Critical Sociology 38 (2012): 71–87.

23. Bannerjee, ‘The Future’.

24. Crawford, ‘Contesting’, 1; Lehtovuori, ‘Towards’, 71–87; Ali Madanipour, ‘Ambiguities of Urban Design’, The Town Planning Review 68.3 (1997): 370–72.

25. Lefebvre, The Production; Eugene J. McCann, ‘Race, Protest and Public Space’, Antipode 31.2 (1999): 163–84; M. Crawford, ‘Blurring the boundaries:

150

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 150 2/18/13 6:41:20 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

Public space and private life’, in Everyday Urbanism, ed. J. Chase, M. Crawford and K. John (New York: Monacelli, 1999): 22–35; Bannerjee, ‘The Future’, 19.

26. For this discussion, see John Montgomery, ‘Making a City: Urbanity, Vitality and Urban Design’, Journal of Urban Design 3.1 (1998): 95–97. For physical determinism, see Gordon Cullen, The Concise Townscape (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 1961). For psychology of place, see Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960). On ‘street life and activity’, see Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); and on ‘life between buildings’, see Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987).

27. My emphasis. Peter Buchanan, ‘What City? A Plea for Place in the Public Realm’, Architectural Review 1101 (November 1988): 33.

28. Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000).

29. My emphasis. Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005).

30. Monica M. Degen and Gillian Rose, ‘The Sensory Experiencing of Urban Design’, Urban Studies 49.15 (November 2012): 1–17; Lehtovuori, ‘Towards Experiential’, 75–76.

31. Ibid., 84; Panu Lehtovuori, Experience and Conflict: The Production of Urban Space (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), 125.

32. Crawford, ‘Blurring’, 8–9; Lehtovuori, ‘Towards Experiential’, 71–72.

33. Madanipour, Whose Public; Crawford, ‘Contesting’; Ernest Sternberg, ‘An Integrative Theory of Urban Design’, Journal of the American Planning Association 66.3 (2000): 265–78; Lehtovuori, ‘Towards Experiential’; Graham and Aurigi, ‘Virtual cities’; Bannerjee, ‘The Future’, 9.

34. Petros, ‘The public’; Weng, ‘Observing’.

35. Thompson, ‘Urban Open’.

36. Bannerjee, ‘The Future’, 16–18; Graham and Aurigi, ‘Virtual cities’, 19.

37. Nightingale, The Handbook.

38. Scott Mcquire, ‘Rethinking media events’, New Media Society 12 (2010): 567; Virág Molnár, ‘Reframing Public Space through Digital Mobilization: Flash Mobes and the Futility (?) of Urban Youth Culture’, Theory, Culture, and Society, 2010, accessed May 25, 2012, http://www.scribd.com/ doc/91277534/Reframing-Public-Space.

151

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 151 2/18/13 6:41:20 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

39. Mcquire, ‘Rethinking Media’.

40. Stephen Carr, Mark Francis, Leanne G. Rivlin, Andrew M. Stone, Public Space (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 19.

41. Low, On the Plaza.

42. Ibid.

43. Degen and Rose, ‘The Sensory’.

44. Ibid.

45. Montgomery, ‘Making’, 100.

46. Madanipour, Whose Public, 17; Graham and Aurigi, ‘Virtual cities’.

47. For the use of ‘co-production’, see the final case study of four communities in the Nord Pas-de-Calais region in France in Madanipour, Whose Public.

48. Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960), 94.

49. Ranabir Samaddar, ‘The Last Hurrah That Continues’, Trans Europeennees 19.20 (2001): 31.

50. Fred Scholz, ‘Urbanization and the third world: The case of Pakistan’, Applied Geography and Development 21 (1983): 7–34.

51. Stephen P. Cohen, ‘The Nation and the State of Pakistan’, The Washington Quarterly 25.3 (Summer 2002): 113.

52. R.E. Mortimer Wheeler, Five Thousand Years of Pakistan: An Archeological Outline (London: Royal India & Pakistan Society, 1950).

53. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 79–80.

54. Glenn V. Stephenson, ‘Pakistan: Discontiguity and the Majority Problem’, Geographical Review 58.2 (1968): 195–213.

55. Cohen, ‘The Nation’, 109–10.

56. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 58–63.

57. Arif Hasan, Understanding Karachi: Planning and Reform for the Future (Karachi: City Press, 1999); Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 69.

58. Nicholas Taylor, ‘Islamabad: A Progress Report on Pakistan’s New Capital City’, The Architectural Review 141 (1967): 211–16; Sten Nilsson, The New Capitals of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Lund: Curzon Press, 1973), 139.

152

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 152 2/18/13 6:41:20 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

59. Please see Nilsson, The New Capitals; Orestes Yakas, Islamabad: The Birth of a Capital (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

60. Ibid., 143.

61. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 70.

62. Vernon Z. Newcombe, ‘A Town Extension Scheme at Karachi’, The Town Planning Review 31(1960): 219.

63. Kamil Khan Mumtaz, Architecture in Pakistan (Singapore: Butterworth Architecture, 1985).

64. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 70–71.

65. Newcombe, ‘A Town’.

66. Mumtaz, Architecture.

67. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 70–71.

68. Nilsson, The New Capitals, 143–44.

69. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 71–74; Nilsson, The New Capitals, 144.

70. Lawrence Ziring, ‘From Islamic Republic to Islamic State in Pakistan’, Asian Survey 24.9 (1984); Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 67.

71. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

72. Saadia Toor, ‘A National Culture for Pakistan’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6.3 (2005): 319.

73. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1977–1978 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Markus Daechsel, ‘Sovereignty, Governmentality and Development in Ayub’s Pakistan: The Case of Korangi Township’, Modern Asian Studies 45.1 (2011): 131–57.

74. Hamza Alavi, ‘The State in Post-Colonial Societies’, in Politics and the State in the Third World, ed. Harry Goulbourne (London: Macmillan, 1979); Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005).

75. Khan, ‘Constantinos’.

76. Ibid., 87–88.

77. Ahmad Hasan Dani and Afsar Akhtar Husain, The Quaid-i-Azam Mausoleum (Karachi: National Book Foundation, 1976).

153

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 153 2/18/13 6:41:21 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

78. Ardeshir Cowasjee, ‘Treemazar – 3’, Dawn, July 30, 2000.

79. Zahir-ud-Deen Khwaja, Memoirs of an Architect (Karachi: Arch Press, 1998); Kaleem Omar, ‘Quaid’s Mazaar Design Controversy Revisited’, The News, Jang Group, October 16, 2005.

80. Ibid.

81. Ibid.; Ardeshir Cowasjee, ‘Her Father’s Daughter’, Dawn, April 4, 2004.

82. Cowasjee, ‘Treemazar’.

83. Omar, ‘Quaid’s Mazaar’.

84. Dani, The Quaid.

85. Ibid.

86. Nilsson, The New Capitals, 144; Dani, The Quaid.

87. For example, Taj Mahal, Humayun ‘s tomb, Jahangir’s tomb, etc.

88. Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1992); William J.R. Curtis, ‘Authenticity, Abstraction and the Ancient Sense: Le Corbusier’s and Kahn’s Ideas of Parliament’, Perspecta 20 (1983): 191–93.

89. Ahmed Z. Khan, ‘Representing the State: Symbolism and Ideology in Doxiadis’ Plan for Islamabad’, in The Politics of Making, ed. Mark Swenarton, Igea Troiani and Helena Webster (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 61–75; Ahmed Z. Khan, ‘Rethinking Doxiadis’ Ekistical Urbanism’, Positions: Modern Architecture and Urbanism 1 (2010): 6–39.

90. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 229–44.

91. Ibid., 303–13.

92. Doxiadis Associates, The Administrative Functions, Islamabad-DOX-PA-78 (Athens: Doxiadis Associates, 1960), 114.

93. Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1978), 83–85.

94. Khan, ‘Constantinos’, 303–11.

95. Ibid., 311–16.

96. Ibid.

97. Madanipour, Whose Public.

154

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 154 2/18/13 6:41:21 PM On Design and Politics of Co-producing Public Space

98. Daechsel, ‘Sovereignty’, 131.

99. Ibid., 157.

100. Shahid Javed Burki, ‘Ayub’s Fall: A Socio-Economic Explanation’, Asian Survey, 12.3 (1972): 201–12; Hasan Askari Rizvi, The Military and Politics in Pakistan 1947–86 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2000).

101. Rizvi, The Military, 182.

102. Fruman, ‘Will’, 12–13; Burki, ‘Ayub’s Fall’.

103. Burki, ‘Ayub’s Fall’, 211.

104. Lefebvre, The Production; McCann, ‘Race’.

105. Daanish Mustafa and Katherine E. Brown, ‘Spaces of Performative Politics and Terror in Pakistan’, Environment, Politics and Development Working Paper 33 (London: King’s College, 2010): 14, accessed May 25, 2012, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/geography/research/epd/work- ing.html.

106. ‘Nuggets from the Urdu Press’, The Friday Times, September 9, 2011.

107. Ahmed and Stephan, ‘Fighting for’, 502.

108. Marta Bolognani, ‘Virtual Protest with Tangible effects?’, Contemporary South Asia 18.4 (2010): 401–12; James Traub, ‘Can Pakistan be Governed?’, The New York Times Magazine, April 5, 2009, accessed May 22, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/magazine/05zardari-t.html.

109. Mustafa and Brown, ‘Spaces’; Fruman, ‘Will’, 10; Shaun Gregory, ‘Pakistan on Edge’, Open Democracy, September 24, 2006, http://www. opendemocracy.net/conflict-india_pakistan/musharraf_rule_3935.jsp.

110. Shah, ‘A Political Timeline’.

111. Ibid.

112. Oskar Verkaaik, Migrants and Militants: ‘Fun’ and Urban Violence in Pakistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

113. Fruman, ‘Will’, 11.

114. Yusuf, ‘Old and New’.

115. Fruman, ‘Will’; Sadaf, ‘Public Perception’.

116. Bolognani, ‘Virtual Protest’; Yusuf, ‘Old and New’; Sadaf, ‘Public Perception’.

155

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 155 2/18/13 6:41:21 PM Ahmed Z. Khan

117. Citing Hannah Arendt in Mustafa, ‘Spaces’, 14.

118. Arendt, The Human, 194–95.

119. Ahmed and Stephan, ‘Fighting for’, 493, 502.

120. Ibid.

121. Editorial, ‘Imran Khan’s “Tsunami” Sweeps Lahore’, The Express Tribune (Pakistan), October 30, 2011; ‘Imran’s Dream Team Wows Karachi’, The Express Tribune (Pakistan), December 24, 2011.

156

IJIA 2.1_Khan_125-156.indd 156 2/18/13 6:41:22 PM