The government of Pakistan has recently announced the Ravi Riverfront Urban Development Project which will displace and dispossess a large number of residents and landowners across the banks of River Ravi in the hopes of building a ‘world-class’ city the size of Lahore.

This session invites panelists to share their understanding of how this project is proceeding, the forces driving this project, the impacts that can be foreseen on ground, the challenges that are emerging for the residents and landowners, as well as the means of resistance being taken up. Panelists will also speak about larger trends that are contributing to urban change, and the actors and instruments that enable it.

Tanveer Ahmad is an investigative journalist. His work covers many aspects of civic life such as urbanization, population, development, and environment. Over the last 11 years, he has worked with a number of mainstream media organizations and is now affiliated with the digital news media platform Sujag. He holds a master’s degree in Mass Communication and Urdu Literature.

Rabia Ezdi is an Associate Professor at the National College of Arts, Lahore. She researches issues of urban development in Lahore, with a focus on the impacts of projects and planning approaches on low and lower-middle-income groups in the city. She has a Masters degree in Urban Development from IHS Rotterdam.

Fahad Malik is an advocate of the high courts and the founding partner at Praxis Legal. His areas of expertise include public interest litigation, with a special focus on strategic environmental intervention. Mr. Malik has represented the affectees of various urban expansion projects undertaken in Punjab, most notably, the affectees of the Ravi Riverfront project, Lahore elevated expressway and the orange line.

Chaudry Sajjad Warraich is a social activist who has actively led protests against the forcible land accusation in the Ravi Riverfront Urban Project. Warraich, a farmer by profession, has drawn attention to the social and economic impacts of the project, and has been involved with advocacy efforts against the project on behalf of the community.

Umair Javed is Assistant Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Mushtaq Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS). He completed his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2018, where he was a recipient of the LSE Centennial Ph.D. Studentship. He is currently working on a cross-country study of contentious mobilisation around energy access in low-income settlements in Pakistan, Mozambique, and Nigeria, with researchers at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex.