A COMMON refrain among critics and residents of other Punjab cities is that Lahore has been unduly pampered by successive provincial governments. Substantial provincial transfers, it is argued, have financed its infrastructure and socioeconomic services at the expense of other jurisdictions. The reality, however, is more sobering. Lahore does not need such supposed favours. In fact, Lahore suffers from being heavily controlled — and effectively taxed — by a provincial administration that does not allow the city to own, manage and leverage its assets for value.

Lahore is among the wealthiest cities in South Asia in terms of public assets. Yet its potential to become vibrant, liveable and economically dyna­mic is stifled by provincial domination, primitive regulatory congestion and chronic political and bureaucratic misgovernance. These failures are compounded by a fragmented institutional structure of multiple agencies with overlapping mandates. An equally important — and less understood — constraint is the failure to measure what the city actually owns.

Lahore sits on trillions of rupees worth of public land, real estate, metro corridors, parks, heritage sites and other fee-generating instruments. But a critical piece is missing: there is no comprehensive balance sheet — no systematically developed registry cataloguing and valuing urban assets to present a consolidated financial position, and no governance framework designed to harness and grow this capital.

In global cities such as Toronto, Singapore and Copenhagen, public assets are actively managed to build wealth, improve services and support sustainable growth. In Lahore, we do not even count them.

The result is a city that owns billions but behaves as if it owns........

© Dawn