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Distributed for UCL Press

Lahore in Motion

Infrastructure, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan

Distributed for UCL Press

Lahore in Motion

Infrastructure, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan

Follow Lahore’s Orange Line metro corridor to discover the tensions between progress and displacement, history and modernity, in a city that never sleeps.

Lahore is a city in constant flux, and nowhere is this transformation more visible than along the tracks of its first metro rail corridor. Lahore in Motion follows the Orange Line’s 27-kilometer path, weaving together reflections from academics, activists, artists, and architects on the ways infrastructure reshapes urban belonging. Moving far beyond the train stations themselves, the book critically studies how this mega-project has displaced residents, reconfigured neighborhoods, and sparked new desires for modernity while also deepening existing social differences.

Each chapter unfolds through the lens of a particular metro stop, providing intimate glimpses into the frictions of development—where connectivity and fragmentation, aspiration, and dispossession collide. Engaging with broader debates on urban transformation in the Global South, Lahore in Motion goes against familiar narratives of top-down development, revealing instead a city that resists and reinvents itself in response. An eye-opening, beautifully written work for all interested in urbanism, infrastructure politics, and a glance into the everyday lives of one of the world’s most dynamic cities.

248 pages | 40 color plates, 1o halftones, 10 line drawings, 3 maps | 6.14 x 9.21

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology


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Reviews

"This brilliant collection of essays written by a stellar bunch of academics and practitioners is a critical addition to the expanding knowledge frontier on infrastructure and cities in Pakistan. Anchored in the mega-infrastructure project the Orange Line, the stories unfold at multiple scales and bring to life the contradictory effects of infrastructure's longstanding promise of a better urban future."

Nausheen Anwar, author of Infrastructure Redux: Crisis, Progress in Industrial Pakistan and Beyond

"A lovely, mind-boggling tapestry of a book. Lahore in Motion gives us sharp, short glimpses into how Lahore lives, dies, plays, goes to work, prays, celebrates, resists and surrenders. Intimate forays into how a city reinvents itself, struggles to breathe and remembers that other imagined Lahore of legends."

Mohammed Hanif, author of Rebel English Academy

"Unfolding the personal and neighbourhood frictions lived along the Orange Line, a sensitive, accessible and scholarly portrait of contemporary city life emerges in these pages as a choir of discordant voices ruminate on the practical and symbolic logics of urban infrastructure."

Caroline Knowles, author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London

"A compelling journey with electric insights about Lahore’s old and new geographies one metro station at a time. Each author provides an intricate and personal gateway into the city to muse and reflect on how people live, aspire and remember."

Rashmi Sadana, author of The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements and note on transliteration

Introduction: Walking the Orange Line
Ammara Maqsood, Chris Moffat and Fizzah Sajjad

1 Dera Gujran
Chris Moffat

2 Islam Bagh
Shandana Waheed

3 Salamatpura
Anushay Malik

4 Mehmood Booti
Ammar Ali Jan

5 Pakistan Mint
Faizan Ahmad

6 Shalamar Bagh
Sajjad Kausar

7 Baghbanpura
Fizzah Sajjad

8 UET
Shakeel Ahmed

9 Sultanpura
Dawar H Butt

10 Lahore Railway
Fatima Tassadiq

11 Lakshmi Chowk
Amen Jaffer

12 GPO
Hala Bashir Malik

13 Anarkali-Lake Road
Shafaq Sohail

14 Chauburji
Umber bin Ibad

15 Gulshan-e-Ravi
Ammara Maqsood

16 Samanabad
Azka Shoaib

17 Bund Road
Mishele Ijaz

18 Salahuddin Road
Timothy PA Cooper

19 Khatam-e-Nabbuwat/Shahnoor
Ali Raza

20 Sabzazar
Umair Javed

21 Awan Town
Nida Kirmani

22 Wahdat Road
Fahd Ali

23 Hanjarwal
Tahir Kamran

24 Canal View
Bibi Hajra

25 Thokar Niaz Baig
Ali Usman Qasmi

26 Ali Town
Mina Malik

Afterword
Manan Ahmed Asif

Index

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