The Lahore Megalopolis

If you compare Karachi and Lahore as two cities, Karachi remains the larger, and more economically significant of Pakistan’s two largest cities. But compare them as the core of their respective economic regions within the country, and it is not even close: the economic region of which Lahore is the center is, by far, the larger of the two, and is one of the densest mega regions in the world.

Because while Karachi is a bright lone star on the coast of the Arabian Sea, Lahore is the beating heart of the Lahore Megalopolis, the largest city in a belt that runs from Peshawar through GT Road down to Lahore and then on to Multan, with a small off-shoot in Faisalabad.

In this article, we at Profit are putting forward a new proposition: that the Lahore megalopolis should be added to the global list of mega regions, and that its existence represents both a testimonial to the modest successes of some economic policies of the government of decades past and its still nascent status represents what work must be done to make Pakistan an economically prosperous country.

We would also like to state at the outset what this does not mean: it does not mean that the key to Pakistan’s economic future is to keep spending the bulk of the country’s infrastructure budget developing Lahore, as has been the Sharif Brothers’ modus operandi.