The Struggle for Islamabad’s Future: Who has the Right to the City?

As the planned capital of Pakistan that was built from scratch in the 1960s, Islamabad has a unique status amongst Pakistani cities. Its reputation for being clean, green and safe has been accompanied by the claim that it is ’15 mins from Pakistan’.

But is Islamabad all that different from other urban centres that are increasingly dominated by real estate and construction mafias who dispossess the poor, destroy local ecologies, and answer only to civil and military bureaucrats.

Over the past few months, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has razed thousands of trees, bulldozed the homes of thousands of katchi abadi dwellers, and built roads and plazas to serve the rich with reckless abandon. Both nature and the mass of people are increasingly sacrificed at the altar of what the CDA calls ‘development’. Migrant workers and youth as well as well the original inhabitants and ecologies of the city are, in fact, increasingly under attack by the entity that more and more of us would rather call the ‘Capital Destruction Authority’.

Join us to ask the question: who has the right to the city of Islamabad?

About the Speakers:

• Dr. Farzana Bari
  (Aurat March Islamabad, Rights Activist, Former Director: Center of Excellence in Gender Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University)
• Dr. Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
  (Author, Professor of Political Economy, Quaid-i-Azam University)
• Anam Rathore
  (Climate Action Pakistan/Women Democratic Front)
• Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy
  (Author, Physicist, Columnist, Rights Activist)

This session is free and open to all. Just visit the venue to attend it.

The Black Hole
Plot 5H, Street 100, G-11/3, Islamabad.
Click here for Google Maps Location