Pakistan needs cities that grow, not provinces that govern

Pakistan’s administrative reform debate begins from the wrong premise. We keep asking how many provinces the country should have, when the more urgent question is why its cities—the places where people, firms, capital and ideas actually converge—are not allowed to govern themselves.

The demand for new provinces is understandable: existing provinces are large, centralised and unequal, and provincial capitals often dominate resources while other cities retain little control over even local matters.

But new provinces would not necessarily change that logic; they could simply recreate the same centralisation on a smaller map.

Each one would add another governor, chief minister, assembly, secretariat and bureaucracy. That may mean more government, not better government.

The real reform is more fundamental: powerful, autonomous, professionally managed and democratically accountable city governments.

This is not mainly about municipal services; it is about growth. Cities are where firms locate, workers build skills, and universities, investors, suppliers and markets interact. Productivity depends on that proximity.

Pakistan, however, still treats cities as administrative units rather than economic systems.

International experience clarifies the gap. Keyu Jin describes China’s model as political centralisation with economic decentralisation: Beijing set national direction, while local governments delivered investment, infrastructure and growth.

In this “mayoral economy,” local officials competed for investment, assembled land, built industrial clusters and connected their jurisdictions to wider markets.

Yuen Yuen Ang calls this “directed improvisation”: experimentation, feedback and correction within broad national goals.

The model had serious distortions—land finance, property speculation, local debt and wasteful infrastructure—but its central lesson remains: local governments need authority and incentives to drive development.

A mayor who cannot control land use, transport, infrastructure, building approvals, local taxation or municipal administration is not governing a city; he or she is managing an administrative shell.

The United States reflects the same logic through a different system. Washington sets national rules and funding frameworks, states define legal and fiscal structures, but economic dynamism is driven by metropolitan regions.

California’s strength lies in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Los Angeles; Massachusetts depends on Boston and Cambridge; Texas on Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth and Austin; and North Carolina on the Raleigh–Durham–Chapel Hill corridor.

The real economic unit is often the city-region, not the state.

Edward Glaeser explains why: cities raise productivity by concentrating workers, firms, universities and ideas. Density, when well governed, is an economic asset.

Pakistan has largely ignored this lesson.

Its cities have grown in population but not in institutional authority. Power is scattered among provincial departments, development authorities, cantonments, federal bodies and municipal agencies, leaving no single institution accountable for city performance.

A city cannot compete without control over the systems that shape competitiveness.

Land use, building approvals, property records, transport, sanitation, water, waste management, public space and commercial regulation determine whether firms invest, workers stay and cities function.

Yet Pakistan’s governance model weakens precisely these capacities.

Generalist civil servants rotate across postings while authority remains centralised, preventing local expertise from becoming a professional career.

Urban transport planners, land economists, sanitation engineers, municipal lawyers, property specialists and urban finance experts should anchor city institutions and be judged by city performance.

Cities and districts should therefore recruit, train and retain their own professional administrations—not as extensions of provincial bureaucracies, but as competitive public institutions in their own right.

The constitutional basis already exists: Article 140A requires provinces to devolve political, administrative and financial authority to local governments.

Yet provinces have repeatedly resisted meaningful devolution, leaving local bodies with weak mandates, uncertain tenure and limited resources.

This is why the debate on new provinces misses the point.

A smaller province can still centralise power through its secretariat, recruitment rules, fiscal control and planning authority.

Much of the demand for new provinces is also about dividing resources rather than improving governance.

Who controls the divisible pool, where the capital sits, which bureaucracy manages the budget, and who receives posts and development schemes are questions of political bargaining—not development.

Development means expanding productive capacity: making it easier for firms to invest, innovate and export; and for workers to become more skilled and productive.

The key question is therefore not who receives public money, but who controls the rules governing investment, land, infrastructure, mobility and business formation.

Cities should compete for firms, talent, universities, investment and infrastructure by offering better transport, faster approvals, cleaner environments and more reliable services—and they should share in the gains when their economies succeed.

Pakistan has the opposite system: governments compete for transfers, not cities for investment.

Amazon’s search for a second headquarters illustrates the alternative: cities presented their talent, infrastructure, universities and business environments as economic propositions.

Pakistani mayors cannot credibly do this until they control the basic levers of their cities.

The division of responsibility should be clear: cities and districts should manage local functions; provinces should set standards, manage equalisation and coordinate cross-municipal issues; and the federation should focus on defence, monetary policy, foreign affairs, trade, national infrastructure and regulation.

Subsidiarity should guide the system: decisions should be taken at the lowest level that can perform them effectively.

It would also clarify accountability. Today, mayors blame provinces, provinces blame agencies, agencies blame departments, and bureaucracies blame funding. Everyone has some power; no one is fully responsible.

Give cities authority, predictable revenues, professional administrations and real executive power—then hold them responsible.

Local government is not a minor administrative matter; it is the economic organisation of the country.

Cities are the platforms of modern economic life, connecting people, firms, capital and ideas in ways that generate productivity, innovation, jobs and growth.

Pakistan’s problem is not too few provinces, but too little effective government where its economy actually operates.

More provinces may produce more capitals and more bureaucracy; competitive, autonomous cities will produce investment, productivity and growth. Pakistan does not need another layer of provincial administration; it needs a mayoral economy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026