Islamabad 2109
When cities age, every piece of architecture, marketplace, garden or park, face, road, etc… everything begins to exude the essence of the bygone years, and the impact those years have made on the particular city. In the case of Lahore, one can see the remnants of the colonial era on the Mall road, and in the architecture of the buildings. In places like the Shalimar gardens and the Lahore fort one can see the grandeur of the Mughal empire and can easily envision their lifestyle. The Lahori culture and tradition, the mannerisms of the people, the dynamics of the Lahori people, everything has been created over a course of hundreds of years.
Islamabad being a relatively younger city has a long way to go in creating it’s own ‘history’. One can think of this city as morphing into a concrete metropolis with skyscrapers crammed up together on every major road, flyovers flying over our heads, millions of cars plying the erstwhile empty roads, and more places of amusement in every major sector. One can even think of it as turning into a highly industrialized city with smoke spewing out of every building in every corner, with a plethora of cycles and cheap broken rickety cars creating havoc on the mismanaged roads, and with people walking around with gas cylinders mounted on their backs and gas masks on their heads.
Ok that was just an exaggeration… but how would YOU like the Islamabad of the future to be? What changes do you think are going to take place in this city over the course of the next one hundred years?