Urbanization Trend and Urban Population Projections of Pakistan Using Weighted Approach

Pakistan is confronting over the years with rapid growth of urbanization. The researchers, planners and administration need to identify and rectify the problem of urbanization prevailing since independence but more serious over the past two decades. In this study, the problem of urbanization is quantified with the help of relative measure or index, which enables us to judge how the level of urbanization changes since independence. In ten most populous cities of Pakistan, containing the major part of total urban, the population growth over the split- interval reveals the seriousness of the problem. This can be judged by the population trends of these cities, alarmingly increasing over the past two decades. To take steps in the future, planning for urbanization must be based on precise urban population projection. In fact, province-wise split of the urban-rural population and its projection have great relevance and importance with development plans and their implementations. A specially designed method for the Urban- Rural population projection based on the Weighted - Matrix approach indicate that the Urban population of Pakistan in 1998 with 32.5% of the total is expected to rise to 50% by the year 2030. The tempo of urbanization in the low urbanised provinces like N.W.F.P and Baluchistan is considerably higher, while it is low in the highly urbanised province of Sindh