ISSN 1728-7715(print) ISSN 2519-5050(online) JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH IN OF JOURNAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING Vol. 18, 2015 (First Issue) Vol. VOLUME EIGHTEEN 2015 (First Issue) ISSN 1728-7715(print) ISSN 2519-5050(online) JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING VOLUME EIGHTEEN 2015 (First Issue) Department of Architecture & Planning, NED University of Engineering & Technology, City Campus Maulana Din Muhammad Wafai Road, Karachi. Reference to Digital publication available online at: http://www.neduet.edu.pk/arch_planning/NED-JRAP/index.html ISSN: 2519-5050 (Online) ISSN: 1728-7715 (Print) © Publication Designed at Department of Architecture and Planning NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING Editorial Board S.F.A. Rafeeqi Noman Ahmed Anila Naeem Asiya Sadiq Polack Fariha Amjad Ubaid M. Fazal Noor Shabnam Nigar Mumtaz Editorial Associates Suneela Ahmed Farida Abdul Ghaffar Layout and Composition Mirza Kamran Baig Panel of Referees Muzzaffar Mahmood (Ph.D., Professor, PAF KIET, Karachi) Arif Hasan (Architect and Planner, Hilal-e-Imtiaz) Bruno De Meulder (Ph.D., Professor, K.U. Leuven, Belgium) Nausheen H. Anwer (Ph.D., Associate Prof. of Urban Studies, IBA, Karachi) Ghafer Shahzad (Ph.D., Deputy Director Architecture Punjab Auqaf Department, Lahore) Mohammed Mahbubur Rahman (Ph.D., Professor, Kingdom University, Bahrain) Mukhtar Husain (B.Arch., M.Arch., Turkey) Shahid Anwar Khan (Ph.D., AIT, Bangkok Professor, Curtin University, Australia) Fazal Noor (Head of Department of Architecture, Sir Syed University, Karachi) Pervaiz Vandal (Senior Practicing Architect) Farhan Anwar (CEO, Sustainable Initiatives and member SHEHRI) Jawaid Haider (Ph.D, Dean of Academics, Indus Valley School of Arts & Architecture, Karachi) Christophe Polack (Faculty, Saint-Lucas Brussels Campus, KU Leuven, Belgium) Published by Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan. Printed by Khwaja Printers, Karachi. © Copyrights with the Editorial Board of the Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning CONTENTS Editors Note vii Sarwat Viqar Interrogating Conceptions of Modernity and Tradition in the Production 01 of the Built Environment in South Asia Samra M. Khan Revitalizing Historic Areas; Lessons from the Renovation of Saidpur Village, 11 Islamabad Muhammad Saad Khan, The Impacts of Urbanization on Avian Communities of Lahore 23 Fatima Javeed and Shama Anbrine S.F. Sajjad, N. Naz Spirit of the Place: Evolution and Transformation of Istanbul Chowk, Lahore 33 and G.A. Anjum Muhammad Asim, Increasing Trend Towards Passive Recreation in the Metropolitan 44 Rumana Khan Shirwani and Saima Gulzar Book Review Dr. Anila Naeem Shikarpoor: Historic City, Sindh, Pakistan 50 Inventory and Mapping of Heritaeg Properties, Volume 1 and 2 A Review by Mukhtar Hussain Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning: Vol. 18, 2015 (First Issue) v EDITORS NOTE This issue of JRAP includes five papers, on very different topics. These papers present discourse on different issues, ranging from concepts of modernity and tradition, to tangible and intangible values associated with traditional cities and their historic districts, to the role of urban planning in promoting a healthy life style. Two papers included in this issue were presented in the Sixth Seminar of Urban and Regional Planning, 2011, which was organised by the Department of Architecture and Planning, NED University of Engineering and Technology. The first paper questions the concepts of modernity that emerged in the context of imperial encounters with the local cultures during colonization and the built forms produced. It is argued in this paper that the traditional aspects of the urban built form displaced by the colonial order faced native resistance and resulted in hybridization. The second paper reviews the revitalization process of the Saidpur village near Islamabad and its impacts on the village residents, in terms of social and cultural norms, economic opportunities and resultant effects of gentrification, which excluded participation from the local communities and made the social and historic organization of the area vulnerable. The third paper identifies existing biodiversity of bird species and impacts of urbanisation on the diversity of avian communities from two case study areas of Lahore. The conclusions of this paper point towards the fact that more than any natural disasters these avian communities get negatively impacted most by uncontrolled urbanisation. The next paper documents and analysis the makeover of Istanbul Chowk in Lahore over the last century within the premise that urban spaces lose their sense of place if transformed insensitively. This paper also highlights the fact that if urban heritage, which forms an integral part of identity of a place, is misplaced over time, then also a public space ends up losing its sense of identity. The last paper questions the objectives with which urban plans are produced and the amount of importance given to the notion of creating healthy societies in the Pakistani context. The general trend of shifting of societies towards passive recreation in the Pakistani context is discussed and the role of urban planning as one of the reasons behind this trend is analysed. This issue of JRAP has a book review of Shikarpoor Historic Town: Inventory and Mapping (February 2013) authored by Dr. Anila Naeem. Editorial Board Journal of Research in Architecture and Planning: Vol. 18, 2015 (First Issue) vii INTERROGATING CONCEPTIONS OF MODERNITY AND TRADITION IN THE PRODUCTION OF THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN SOUTH ASIA· Sarwat Viqar* ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION It has been argued that concepts of modernity and The question of preserving the traditional built environment tradition are historical categories that emerged in the context inevitably brings up the problem of how something is deemed of imperial encounters with the other during Colonization. traditional and hence worthy of preservation. For Post- This paper will show how the contingent nature of these Colonial historians working on the Sub-Continent, attempts categories becomes apparent when considering the production to preserve the materiality of the past become a problem of the built environment in South Asia. when they fall into a romanticism that manifests either as a nativism which advocates a return back to the roots, or The advent of British Colonialism in the 18th century as a nationalism that strives to rewrite histories in the service precipitated a significant change in the urban landscape of of nation-building, or as the nostalgia of a bourgeois class South Asian cities. It also created a binary conception of a striving to distance itself from the monotony of a uniform modern order that was a break from the local or native order modernity. Part of this problem is the casting of the traditional of space. From then on, modernity became the institution against the modern a result of the way history itself is of a liberal western order and tradition was what was retained imagined in the subcontinent. by the natives that had been eclipsed by the new order. This trope of the dysfunctional Pre-Modern entered into native, As Chakrabarty (1992:24) suggests, the transition narrative nationalist imaginings of the past as well by establishing a in writing histories in South Asia presumes a fundamental binary between what was and what came after as being point of historical rupture which is the Colonial encounter. forever opposed to each other. In order to assert one, the This encounter achieved two things: on the one hand it other had to be negated. The Imperialist narrative achieved established a Pre-Colonial world and order that was supposed this through asserting the inherently moral nature and to have skidded to a halt at the moment of encounter; on the legitimacy of the Colonial order while the Nationalist narrative other it was supposed to have launched the Colonized world strove to recover the tradition that had been displaced by on a new path of self-realization that would bring it in line the Colonial order. The modern disciplines introduced with with the liberal, modern order of the west. From then on, Colonial rule did provide a powerful prescriptive model of the binaries of native/non-native, Colonial/Pre-Colonial, urban planning that created a privileged position for what despotic/liberal, civilized/non-civilized entered into the very has come to be seen as the modern form of the city. However, way that Indians conceived of their reality, including the drawing upon contemporary South Asian urban built environment. historiography and research it is argued here that this order was constantly destabilized by native resistance, THE COLONIAL MIND-SET appropriation, hybridity and accommodation. In doing so, it appears that the production and reproduction of space in The values and mind-set that informed Colonial governance the built environment of South Asia constantly challenges is illustrated very well in the writings of British travelers, notions of a dynamic, all-consuming modernity against a geographers and even military men from that period. For static tradition that needs to be preserved. example, in Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus, Burton (1851), after laying out the general state Keywords: Modernity, tradition, colonial, culture of decline of the inhabitants of the region