Pakistan Geographical Review, Vol.70, No.2, December
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Pakistan Geographical Review, Vol.70, No.2, December. 2015, PP 45-61 SPATIAL PATTERNS OF RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY IN LAHORE- PAKISTAN SAFDAR ALI SHIRAZI Department of Geography, University of the Punjab, Lahore ABSTRACT Today, more than half of the world’s total population is living in cities and urban settlements. In addition to many other problems prevalent in urban areas, residential mobility is one of the major issues associated with urban governance. That is why this phenomenon needs an urgent attention for researchers in order to analyze the residential mobility behavior of households and its spatial patterns. Residential mobility is when people change their native residences and move to some other locality within the same city under the influence of many factors. Unfortunately, very little is known about residential mobility and household behavior of the population of Lahore-Pakistan. In this paper, focused has been placed on some important aspects of residential mobility in Lahore, using a household survey of 375 householder collected form three selected union councils of Lahore in 2009.The results of the paper have been presented in the form of text and tables and subsequent recommendations have been made. Key words: Spatial Patterns, Residential Mobility, CDGL, Lahories, (UC) Union Council INTRODUCTION Lahore, the capital of province of the Punjab is a metropolitan city. It is the second largest city after Karachi in Pakistan. It lies between 31°-15' and 31˚-43' north latitudes and 74˚-01' and 74˚-39' east longitude. The administrative jurisdiction of the CDGL is spread over an area of1, 772 sq. km. (GoP 1998). The total population of Lahore as counted during 1998 census was 5,143,495 persons. The population of the city grew at an average annual growth rate of 3.32 percent during the intercensal period 1981-98(17 years) and registered an increase of 74.20 percent over 1981 when its population was 2,952,689.The population of Lahore city grew at a faster rate i.e. 4.35 and 4.51 percent during the intercensal period 1951- 61 and 1961-72 respectively registering corresponding increase of 52.65 and 67.36 percent. This is due to influx of people mainly from rural areas of the Punjab. The average household 45 Spatial Patterns of Residential mobility in Lahore-Pakistan size of Lahore city according to 1998 Census was 7.1 persons which had marginally increased from 7.0 in 1981(IMPL-2021). The estimated population of Lahore district in year 2011 is 8,800,000 persons with average annual growth rate of 2.84 percent (GoP, 2011). The urban population in 1998 was 5,209,088 or 82.4% of the total population which grew at an average rate of 3.3 percent annually. Presently, there are 9 town and 150 union councils in the Lahore City District. For the last five Censuses held in Pakistan since 1951, the Census Organization of Pakistan as well as other governmental organizations has not focused on residential mobility-a phenomenon which is taking place in all the major cities of Pakistan. It is pertinent to mention that the history of migration in Lahore is as old as that of the independence of Pakistan in 1947.The district of Lahore was the first to receive the refugees from East Punjab-India. Soon after 1947 a large number of people also migrated to Lahore from the rural areas of Punjab in search of better livelihood. Though the initial intensions were temporary or permanent, many migrants became permanent settlers and ultimately became Lahories (native residents of Lahore). At first most of the migrants settled in poor neighborhood of the city and later on moved to other parts of the city under the influence of push and pull factors in search of better socio-economic living conditions. Later on this gave rise to residential mobility within Lahore. Figure 1: Location of Lahore and sample UCs in Punjab-Pakistan 46 Safdar Ali Shirazi The notion of residential mobility has been extensively studied and researched within various fields of social sciences such as economics, sociology and geography all over the world however, literature in the field of residential mobility is rather scarce in Pakistan. For a comprehensive review of the relevant literature related to the present research one can refer to the pioneer work related to residential mobility which was carried out by Turner (1968).In this pioneer work he identified that in fast developing world people from rural areas migrate to cities in two-stage process. He hypothesizes that the migrants first occupy rental units in central city slums and after some time they moved to bordering fringe suburban neighborhood and thus create a self-help shanti town or housing units. After Turner, numerous researches have been carried out all over the world. Many have argued in the favor his model as that of Turner’s concept of residential mobility in which majority of newly migrants first rent or share small housing units and later are likely to switch over possession of self-help accommodation. Residential mobility patterns within an urban center may be affected by a number of individual level factors, key among are; proximity to work place, duration of residence, employment status, income level, gender and family status (Conway, 1985; Gilbert & Varley, 1990; Klak & Holtzclaw, 1993; Miraftab, 1997; Selier & Klare, 1991; Sudra, 1982; Turner, 1968; UNCHS, 1982). In many case studies researched around world regarding residential mobility, there seems a direct relationship between housing choices (e.g. rental versus owned) and economic status of migrants. Some researchers have also found a significant relationship with kinship and friendship ties in choice of housing decisions which lead to change one’s residence over the course of time (Banerjee, 1983; Conway, 1985).In LDC’s grant of land ownership rights, land market structure and housing markets are also important determinants in one’s decision making of residential mobility (Collier, 1976; Gilbert & Ward, 1985; Selier, 1991; UNCHS, 1982). In order to understand why people move within a city, a number of factors such as family size, education, age, life course events and income have also been highlighted (Cadwallader, 1992; Clark & Dieleman, 1996; Li & Siu, 2001).Age, marital status, the presence of children, income, housing tenure and space, and the previous history of migration, all affect the likelihood of residential mobility. Marriage, childbirth and divorce are particularly important in decision making for the householder to move. However, opinions vary about the strength 47 Spatial Patterns of Residential mobility in Lahore-Pakistan of the relationship between intentions to move and residential mobility behavior (Cadwallader, 1992).With this background, a momentous increase in population as well as that of urban population proportion may be ascribed to the fact that rural to urban migration is taking place in the city since 1947.As a result an increase in urban population has been witnessed since then. The establishments of new housing schemes contiguous to old Lahore were the aftermath of this phenomenon. The gradual household shift of families from the walled city of Lahore and also from the country side to new residential neighborhoods like Model Town, Garden Town, Muslim Town, Johar Town, Faisal Town, Allama Iqbal Town, etc.; and other public and private developer’s housing schemes and residential complexes have also been experienced by native people. The migration of people under various circumstances from other cities of the country as well from abroad after the Gulf boom was over in the region in early 1990’s. Further after 9/11 the major thrust of expatriate Pakistani families from USA and European countries also helped increase in urban population of Lahore and its areal extent which results in residential mobility in Lahore The research paper has the following objectives: 1) To explore the spatial patterns and determinants of residential mobility in Lahore. 2) To identify various pull and push factors which force a household to move from their native place of residence to a newer residential neighborhood. 3) To investigate the future intensions of the residents of Lahore to move from their present places of residence to other areas to appraise future growth corridors in Lahore. MATERIAL AND METHODS The phenomenon of residential mobility is taking place all over Lahore, while it was not possible to study the whole district of Lahore. Therefore, this study has been carried out in THREE selected Union Councils of Lahore and the movement of the people from one UC to another has been taken into consideration. Thus the analysis has been carried on at the Union Council’s level. In the absence of relevant data pertaining to residential mobility, reliance is heavily placed on primary data collected through personal interviews and a well-structured 48 Safdar Ali Shirazi questionnaire. The major aim of this research was to collect the data on a variety of issue and concerns about the residential mobility in Lahore through a detailed questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 22 closed ended questions. In addition to this a number of property dealers and real estate developers were also interviewed to understand the phenomena from their view point. A total of ten enumerators were employed to collect the data from house to house. The enumerators conducted a total of 375 interviews in the form of an informal 20 to 30 minutes meeting, asking people about their names, gender, marital status, age ,education, number of children, occupation, monthly household income, their residential status (own or rented), period of stay at present place, name of previous place, knowledge about this place, distance of present to previous residence, push and pull factors/reasons for moving, the process of moving itself and motivations, and then their intensions to still move from present residence to anywhere else in Lahore in order to sought out the future growth of Lahore itself as well the residential mobility.