Islamabad: The City Pakistan Built for its Social Elite

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Not having any rail or underground metro service in a capital city seems like a huge mistake on the designers part.

I myself living in Rawalpindi/Islamabad for almost 20 years can absolutely confirm that the segregation of classes is present. We used to live in main islamabad but due to the high living costs moving to Rawalpindi or so the new urban areas like Bahria town or DHA is far more affordable than main Islamabad. Still can’t deny that very lucky to live in such a beautiful city 😊

As a resident of Islamabad, this video presents an accurate description of Islamabad for me.

I visited Islamabad in 2005 for a week. It felt like living in someone's curious SimCity idea. It was chill and green, very rigidly organized, but also off-putting. Like the video said, it had no center, no focus.

This has to be one of the most accurate descriptions of Islamabad's construction, its current state of affairs, its social divide, its overall significance as a capital, and the role Rawalpindi has played in its existence that I have ever seen. The fact that I've learned more about the construction of this city from this one video than any social studies or Pakistan studies books taught in our schools and colleges is a damn shame.

Normally nations have army to run ,but Pakistani army 🇵🇰 🪖 have a country to run.

1:25 - Chapter 1 - Conception & design 4:00 - Mid roll ads 5:30 - Back to the video 9:00 - Chapter 2 - Building islamabad 12:50 - Chapter 3 - The city of today

I'm a resident of Islamabad and have been for 14 years. I think its a city of aging and crumbling infrastructure and rapidly rising crime rate as well as over expansion putting strain on available resources such as water.

I so want to visit Pakistan because of a Pakistani man that i met when was a kid. He made us traditional Pakistani food with lamb and other meats also bread and it was and still is my favorite food

Islamabad should have been a far better city than it is currently. My biggest turn-off at Islamabad is its extremely car-centric design. I say extremely because the urban planners had the option to design the city to include all forms of transportation like cycles, foot traffic, bus lanes/routes, trams and overground and underground metros. There should have been and should be a greater concentration on incentivizing use of mix-used apartment buildings. In the US, a car centric country, 60% of trips are made under 6km. If Islamabad develops mix-use apartment buildings in each of the districts it will reduce traffic on the highways greatly and the fuel expenses which is a contentious concern in all of Pakistan. Keep in mind Pakistan’s population since 1960 has multiplied by 6! So apartment buildings, which utilize lands more effectively, will only increase in demand. As for the earthquakes, we have the technology for that now. Japan gets 5 earthquakes a day and few major ones in a year but it is still standing due to innovations in engineering technology.

I have lived in two planned cities, Islamabad and Canberra, Australia and both are eerily similar. Unorganic, lacking social life, planned separation through suburbia and thus heavily dependent on personal transport such as cars. Islamabad has of course fared much worse than Canberra over time. Its the abode of a class based society where the elite have, to a large part managed to exlude the have-nots, but as a cosnequence have seen the rise in crime and growth of surrounding slums. Future is bleak too, as there is not much geographical space left. The city can't build upwards due to the geological faultlines resulting in earthquakes. It will have (more severe and more frequent) water scarity too if the surrounding areas that feed its aquifers, are built upon. The only solution is a complicated one- devolution of power to provinces and cities so that people dont need to live in the capital city, strong population control programme, establishment of new cities along the CPEC, improving existing cities through job creation and civic services, and curtailing the rural to urban migration through similar measures.

Another interesting fact about Islamabad: It is located just a few Kilometres East from what we call, "The Old Ancient Capital" of Taxila which was the capital of many great empires including Indus-Greek Kingdoms, Buddhist Kushan empire and also the seat of Anicent University of Taxila.

Islamabad has the beauty of a city and the serenity of a village. A place to fall in love with despite its many shortcomings.

immediately in the opening of this video i can already see how much insight you have in this topic, as someone who lives in Pakitsan and visits the capital city occasionally its nice to see people abroad taking interest in what kinda shit plays out here. edit - I am genuinely surprised, this is a detailed and accurate analysis, no sugar coating or down-talking, just general facts that people who live on the ground experience and know about, even I can vouch for most of the stuff in this vid.

I absolutely love this city, been living here all my life. I truly believe we need to stop extending Islamabad's boundaries otherwise we will not be able to see the beautiful Islamabad.

I love Islamabad. Although i would back this video up because when I moved to Islamabad for Higher Education, I had to own a motorbike because the bus service was on very limited routes and Taxis ( later on replaced with Uber,Careem etc) were too expensive for my own commuting needs. However, there has been a big activity on expansion of Metro buses which has been very helpful, it requires huge amount of investments for metro or rail systems, because even after the flattening of its Land, terrains have gradul slopes over hard stony earth surfaces. The only viable intercity public transport is through road driven vehicles. I.e A metrobus track which has its own fenced route and is built alongside main roads of the City. But as they say, nothing is perfect and Islamabad has been visually pleasing interms of nature and greenery for me. But is definitely not so good for bringing traditional families along for permanent settlements, its simply too expensive.

You surely haven't been to Islamabad . It's a thriving metropolis now . Beautiful and having a huge middle class

It's a pretty good take but some things to add. Islamabad is one of the easiest cities to traverse when you're in the core areas. For example if you're in what is the 'master plan' the place is an absolute breeze but as you extend into the outwards areas it becomes cumbersome. The city itself has extension colonies which are very much financed by the diaspora. Connecting them to the core city and travelling between it problematic. Now Islamabad's population growth is due to it's desirability but also due to instability in the areas around it. For example the afghan war had a flux of refugees and depending on their economic strata would take the posh areas or one of the slums. This occurred again during the war in SWAT and Waziristan. In addition, the crime in other cities makes Islamabad a much more ideal city to move and raise your families. Now what the city is... is boring. But thankfully now there are 3 generations of residents who are born there and call it home. And it's they who have really tried to gentrify certain areas. For the longest time no one was actually from Islamabad and people went out of town on holidays to their villages, etc. It's still somewhat like that though. I've lived all over the world and this city is my favorite in the world - mainly because I identify as a resident but also because it's a nice lush place, the temperature is great and there's so much greenery that it would make most places envious. However, the traffic is getting worse because no one finds it fashionable to take public transport and also there's a huge dearth of it. The options that we have suck.

Any chance of a companion video on Brasilia? I bet building a new city in Brazil had some interesting and unique challenges.