SOON after the 1998 census results were made public, Reza Ali, an urban planner and researcher from Lahore, wrote a path-breaking article called ‘How urban is Pakistan?’, in which he argued that perhaps half of Pakistan was ‘urban’.

The short article led to much debate and discussion in academic circles and the impression many of us had of Pakistan being urban then, was backed up by very thorough research provided by him.

Continuing with this meticulous work, in Lahore recently, he presented more data from the same census, making an even stronger claim for how much Pakistan had become urban. He argued that the difference between urban/rural was largely a matter of definition, and many ad hoc definitions were used for a variety of purposes, which were often inconsistent, non-comparable or incomplete.

In the 1981 (and 1998) census the definition of urban was the status of local government, thus the population living within the boundaries of all ‘urban local councils’ was designated as ‘urban’. This 1981 definition based on ‘administrative definition’, implied that all places which would earlier have qualified as urban, were ignored.

This definition of administrative boundary also had other, obvious, repercussions. City expansion is rapid while boundary revisions are infrequent, thus all new suburbs and peripheral growth is outside the boundary. In the 1998 census, Lahore’s Defence Housing Authority, the Lahore Development Authority and private schemes were rural.

By just considering the population within the administrative boundary of Lahore as urban, the sub-urban and peripheral population outside the boundary was considered rural. Not surprisingly, the municipality population grew at 3.14pc per annum, while the surrounding ‘rural’ areas grew at 4.14pc per annum.

Clearly, definitions matter. On the one hand, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ seem clear terms with contrasting images: isolated farms, tiny hamlets, cultivated fields, villages, versus, the thriving city, skyscrapers and slums.

This may have been a simple way of defining ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ some centuries or even decades ago, but this dichotomy is comfortable but imprecise and oversimplified. Life changes in a variety of dimensions along this route: from fields and intensive cultivation, villages and small market towns, to larger towns, small cities and the cosmopolitan city. It is not a single homogenous activity — it is multi-functional and diverse.

Categorisations are largely becoming irrelevant as people live their lives in different ways rendering conventional definitions obsolete. The urban-rural divide appears as a gradient, rather than a dichotomy. There does not appear to be a natural dividing line or break point between rural and urban areas any more.

Many social, cultural, economic and environmental issues are inadequately addressed by current approaches separating ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ agendas. Behaviour and conditions change drastically along the gradient, but there seems to be no compelling reason to segment into just these two categories.

Reza Ali makes the argument that there is no reason to restrict analysis to just these two categories — urban and rural — and one can introduce the concept of an ‘urbanising area’. The latter is an area which does not meet the criteria of an urbanised area as we defined, yet, it has both an urban core and an overall density higher than that for rural areas. Thus, it’s clearly not rural, but, it has not urbanised yet, hence the term ‘urbanising’.

Based on previous research, this work has identified some key spatial features which include the fact that urban built-up areas have expanded well beyond city limits; new suburbs — schemes — have developed around cities. Peri-urban growth has gained in significance, grown substantially and acquired ‘urban characteristics’.

Ribbons of development between cities, towns, industrial satellites, along highways have grown and densified; in the more rural areas, densities are increasing along major road corridors; and, the population which has physically not moved to the cities, has adopted urbanism as a way of life, reflected in changing pattern of consumption and use of services.

The cumulative effect of this has been intense urbanisation, city populations are much higher than what official data is prepared to reflect, and there is a connectivity and integration of services and manufacturing access across city boundaries.

This redefinition and remapping of the urban and the rural, has made Reza Ali argue that Pakistan is evolving a system of cities, and developing urban regions — connecting, linking, integrating trade, services, manufacturing and the work force — within city core and suburbs, peri-urban areas, satellites, small towns and neighbouring villages, causing the co-movement of urbanisation and informality, a phenomenon seen in many other global cities.

There are clear indications of a developing multi-polar urban, mega-region in central Punjab, which is Pakistan’s dominant sub-national economic and cultural space, with a chain of metropolitan regions, substantial urban centres, cities and towns.

Reza Ali’s results suggest the following: in the Punjab 74pc of the population is urban, 53pc in Sindh, 45pc in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan which is 99pc rural in terms of area, has an urban population — almost all in Quetta — of 12pc.

Furthermore, 98pc of the Punjab lives within two hours of a city, 82pc about one hour away. One must remind ourselves, that these are data from the 1998 census and much has changed since then. Perhaps Pakistan, or at least a very large part of it, is almost completely urban in 2013.

The writer is a political economist.