rees along Islamabad’s arterial roads have been disappearing at a pace many residents say they have never witnessed before. In recent months, road-widening projects, hill-cutting and large-scale clearing of green belts have accelerated across the capital. These are frequently justified as efforts to improve “connectivity” and ease congestion. Together, these developments have fuelled a growing public debate over what many now describe as the Lahorification of Islamabad. The slang has emerged to denote a shift toward a car-centric development model long associated with environmental and public health costs in many cities around the world.

Planned as a low-density, linear capital with protected natural buffers, the federal capital was never meant to absorb the scale of concrete-heavy expansion that is now under way. Urban planners and environmental experts warn that treating Islamabad as interchangeable and conflating it with Pakistan’s larger, commercial cities risks long-term ecological and social consequences that may far outlast the infrastructure projects.

The changes are increasingly visible; entire stretches of green belt have been cleared, sometimes within days. Road expansion has pushed closer to the Margalla foothills - an area that is and ecologically sensitive and legally protected. Environmental impact assessments, experts say, rarely form part of a transparent public process, limiting meaningful scrutiny of projects that permanently alter the city’s landscape.

This transformation is unfolding amid intensifying climate stress. Pakistan has recorded its hottest year on record and Islamabad is already experiencing longer heatwaves, increasingly erratic rainfall and more frequent flash flooding following short bursts of rain. Winter smog, once associated with distant Lahore, now lingers in the federal capital and air quality readings routinely cross hazardous thresholds.

Despite these warning signs, policy responses continue to prioritise road expansion. The underlying assumption, urban researchers note, is that wider roads will ease congestion and modernise the city. Decades of international evidence from Los Angeles to New Delhi, however, suggest the opposite. Expanding road capacity induces demand, encouraging more private vehicles, restoring congestion within years and increasing emissions and urban sprawl.

Lawyer Rafay Alam says Islamabad is following a well-documented cycle. “In Lahore, we called it Dubaification,” he says. “Islamabad is getting a copy of a copy of the plan. We already know what will follow; more traffic congestion and air pollution.”

Alam says that the benefits of such development are unevenly distributed. “This road infrastructure development, which results in the felling of trees, is for the benefit of property developers. It helps maintain high property prices,” he says. “Urban development shouldn’t be a subsidy to the rich. I often think about what would have happened if, instead of spending billions on road infrastructure for the automobile elite, we had invested in sustainable cities and public transport.”

Islamabad’s expanding road network overwhelmingly favours private vehicles in a city where public transport remains limited and unreliable. Sidewalks have narrowed or disappeared, pedestrian crossings are often unsafe and cyclists are forced onto high-speed corridors not designed for non-motorised traffic.

For many residents, this has reshaped daily life. Hamza, a university student living near the city centre, says each new road project makes walking more difficult. “I don’t have a car. Every time roads are widened it becomes more dangerous to cross them,” he says.

Lahore’s trajectory offers a cautionary precedent. The city now regularly ranks among the world’s most polluted during winter months, with smog disrupting schools and healthcare systems. Urban heat island effect, driven by unchecked construction and loss of tree cover, has made summers increasingly severe.

Architect Fawad Suhail Abbasi, the president of the Institute of Architects Pakistan, says Islamabad was originally designed to avoid precisely these outcomes.

“Islamabad was the first planned linear city in Asia from the early 1960s,” he says. “It developed as a naturally green and walkable model of urban design. But by some estimates, deforestation in and around Islamabad has increased by as much as 600 per cent,” he says. “These actions by the Capital Development Authority to facilitate illegal housing schemes and unplanned developments are a recipe for an urban disaster.”

Environmental activists say that while new roads often connect elite housing societies and commercial developments, the environmental costs are shared by all residents. “The labourer, the student and the developer all breathe the same air,” says climate activist Hania Imran. “But only a small group gets to decide how much of that air is sacrificed.”

The Public Relations Directorate of the CDA was contacted for comment regarding the concerns raised in this report. It had not responded by the time of publication.

The contributor is a climate justice activist. She tweets @ridarashid