Cities

Perhaps one of the most difficult thing in column writing is to continue from where you left off the previous week; which by the way is a consequence of another difficulty column writers struggle with regularly, managing your thoughts in the allotted space!

For example, whilst all efforts have been made to conclude the problem statement write-up, but the more you thought about it the more you realized that, logically, problem solving was not in the interest of anybody, at least those who mattered; after all if there were no problems, how would you ask for votes?

Democracy and freedom of speech thrive on problems.

But some day, not a promise though, may revert to solving the problem statement, purely from an economic sense; for the moment let's get back to ADB's Asian Development Outlook 2019 Update. Last week I had asserted that my take from the Update was the declining global trade and its ramifications for Pakistan; in short a focus on reducing imports one way or the other in the short and long-term. But there is more.

"Developing Asia is urbanizing rapidly, promising job creation and economic growth. However, cities must function well as labour markets if they are to enjoy the economic benefits of agglomeration. This requires sound urban planning, efficient public transport, and affordable housing. As cities expand over municipal boundaries and become more connected with one another through flows of goods, services and people, better planning coordination is needed at all levels of government." Highlights from the aforementioned update.

Reading the above and thinking about it, you get this strange worrisome feeling that you are probably not even part of developing Asia! And, the fact that we seem to have completely missed the theme of the Update in our expeditiousness to break the news that ADB also projects low growth for Pakistan; the urgency with which we want to break and then relish bad news relating to our own country, is befuddling; we are a bunch of crazies.

The theme of the Update was planning and coordinating to enable cities to function as labour markets and be engines of growth; the focus of the Update was definitely not Pakistan's GDP.

Unfortunately in our case, leaving aside planning and coordination, we have made an utter mess of the two cities responsible for improving radically in 2019 our rankings in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index. Karachi, if news reports and feedback from friends can be relied upon, is fast becoming, if it isn't already, a garbage dump; and all the governments have still not figured out who is responsible for cleaning the mess. Lahore, on the other hand, perhaps is in the top 10 when it comes to air pollution; and we are back to Dengue. If the World Bank ever starts considering these factors when ranking countries, we might be in trouble.

And if we cannot manage our cities today, we should really get worried by ADB's projection that urbanization rate will keep on increasing. And in our case it is already rapidly increasing anyway.

With less water available for agriculture lands since we do not want to be bothered with maintaining and improving the canal systems; with less water in the rivers that feed the canal system because we would rather fight over building dams than do anything constructive; with less and less agricultural land since we refuse to invest on fertility and are more interested in building housing schemes and coal power plants on fertile lands; and with less and less yields because we do not wish to be bothered with the hassle of researching and developing new seeds or varieties of produce, it is but natural that rural population will migrate in vast numbers to the cities for seeking employment. Regular readers, if there are any, will notice the repetition; yes they are right, agriculture is important enough for me to highlight its problems at every opportunity I get. And oh yeh, we have to bring in legislation to ensure property disputes are resolved within two years up to the Supreme Court level; that is my other pet peeve.

Getting back to this mass migration from rural to urban areas, unfortunately, in a nutshell, our cities are already struggling with providing efficient public transport, affordable housing, job creation, cleanliness, pollution, utilities, providing clean drinking water, and accordingly are nowhere near ready to welcome this influx. Contrarily, the new immigrants further elevate the problems that cities already struggle with.

The ADB Update rightly points out that large city tends to be more productive and that growth requires vibrancy in all types of cities.

Truly, cities and markets have to be continuously maintained and nourished for economic growth, but that is not an easy task; especially compared to the stock market where just sentiments can make the index move. The latter is the reason why some of us believe that the Casino should be completely ignored when talking about economic growth or revival. But politicians, and for good reason I guess, love quick fixes.

I have written before about why Cities are important and why we need to spend to look after the goose which lays the golden eggs; and I have also always maintained that we need to look beyond the quick fixes. Not to say, that interest rates, and rupee valuation, or fiscal discipline or collecting more taxes are not important, but if we really want to grow, we need to focus more on those areas which need more than six months of time and effort to improve. A personally observed law of economics and physics - what gets better quickly gets bad quicker, what gets better with concentrated time and effort, once better takes twice as long to get bad.

In our case, the other takeaway from the Update is that we need to focus simultaneously on agriculture to ensure a growing labour market in the rural areas to control the exodus to the cities, and invest on our urban areas to grow our markets and cities.

(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected])