About the Books
The Imperatives of Urban and Regional Planning
Concepts and Case Studies from the Developing World
It is a fact that the world is undergoing a gyrational transition, thus steadfast urban and regional planning is relevant in order to achieve global transformation and development. In The Imperatives of Urban and Regional Planning, author Anis Ur Rahmaan shares the indispensable concepts and case studies from the developing world. Readers will uncover highly diversified knowledge and information that cover a wide topical and temporal range.
The Imperatives of Urban and Regional Planning contains articles and papers that have come about after years of academic and applied research endeavors of the practitioners and academicians in the field of urban and regional development planning. Most of these articles have already been presented and deliberated in national and international conferences held in different parts of the world, namely: Indianapolis, Newcastle upon Tyne, Rome, Istanbul, Cairo, Alexandria, Vienna, Stockholm, Jeddah, Riyadh, Jubail, Islamabad, Penang, and Bandung.
Not only are developed and developing countries getting influenced by each other and transforming due to a process of circular causation, but each of the two sets of countries are also undergoing a simultaneous internal transformation due to the differential infusion of technology and indigenous entrepreneurship. As a consequence, highly diversified urban systems are getting integrated interactively, leading to the formation of a global village and achievement of a unity in diversity.
A Galaxy of Desires
Ostensibly written as travelogue for Dr. Anis ur Rahmaan’s wanderings across the globe, written with the verve of Ghalib the poet, casting the world into various mysteries like Lawrence Durrell did in his Alexandria Quartet, this autobiography banishes the notion that Islamic writers have not attained the level of literary complexity Western writers have. A Galaxy of Desires is a true spanning of the breadth of human knowledge. Yet it has all the comfort of poetry (ref. to Ghalib), a discipline supposed to have been perfected by wandering Sufis (and whose records were “lost” or buried, literally, in the sands, since such perfection must return to the Master). In this sense, Dr. Rahmaan seems to be playing the apostate. But then, that sense rises only when the author’s subjects are of the world and its worldliness, when his faith is being tried.
The galaxy, then, that readers of this book of wonders explore is the mind of one Anis ur Rahmaan, who prefers to be subject to the whims of the universe. Lest readers mistake this to be a romantic book, they need only puzzle out some of his thoughts on architecture to see the hardcore philosophe struggling to make sense of the nexus of ambivalence that ties together Eastern and Western philosophies. If nothing else, Dr. Rahmaan has brilliantly illuminated the circle that his life has circumscribed.
Anjuman e Arzu
Anjuman e Arzu (Urdu version of A Galaxy of Desires) is an autobiographical travelogue, written from time to time over the last fifty years. Using his unique writing style, the author describes the continuous and ever changing journey of life. The different installments of this travelogue, directly or indirectly, reflect the evolutionary development of the author’s state of mind at the time of their writing.
Evolution of Town Planning in Pakistan
With a Specific Reference to Punjab Province
The book describes the world's oldest human settlements during the rather long and diversified sets of civilizations and cultural epochs in the regions, which are now situated within the territorial limits of Pakistan, and highlights three historical periods, namely (i) the age of neolithic settlements, (ii) the Indus Valley civilization, and (iii) the period of precolonial empires and kingdoms and against this backdrop deals with the human settlements of the colonial and postcolonial period in Pakistan.
The main motivation for writing this book has been threefold. First, to increase the awareness among the current and prospective students of town planning in particular and the planners at large, in general, about the evolutionary process of town planning in Pakistan. Second, to identify some of the shortcomings, gaps, and overlapping in the process of planning and development of towns in Pakistan. And third, to emphasize the need to undertake further research about the various facets of the subject area.
This book is a time series rather than a cross-sectional analysis of the Evolution of Town Planning in Pakistan. It attempts to highlight the various processes and geopolitical landmarks during the nine-thousand-years-long evolutionary processes of physical planning and development in the Indian subcontinent in general and those in Pakistan in particular. It traverses a long temporal and evolutionary progression of town planning processes in Pakistan. This book is a very modest effort to fill a huge gap and may even provide an incentive for the future planning historians and academicians to undertake more in-depth cross-sectional analysis of various processes comprehensively.