Mismatched Clocks: The Disparity in Gentrification of Shahi Mohalla

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 16: Urban and Community Sociology

Abstract

This paper examines gentrification in Shahi Mohalla, a neighborhood inside Lahore’s Walled City, by focusing on time and unequal governance. Fort Road Food Street sits within the same area, yet the Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) runs it on a different clock. The street looks finished. Lighting, paving, cleaning, and security follow fixed routines. WCLA allocates space through leased stalls and authority-assigned lorries. These vendors help perform a curated “Old Lahore” image for visitors. Rents and overheads raise prices. Many workers commute in, not from Shahi Mohalla.

A few turns away, residents describe a slower, uneven tempo. Streets flood, drains clog, and repairs arrive late or in fragments. Surveillance and checks appear without warning, then disappear. Residents plan work and movement around this uncertainty. Moral policing remains part of daily life, shaped by the area’s history as a red-light district and by periodic crackdowns framed as “clean-up.” The same authority that maintains order on the tourist route leaves surrounding lanes to cope with instability.

I call this condition asynchronous urbanism. Project time moves in fast bursts tied to aesthetics, events, and routes that tourists see. Household time moves through waiting, piecemeal fixes, and budgeting as rents rise and livelihoods shift. Tailors, performers, and small sellers adjust by changing hours, moving work indoors, taking on side labor, or leaving. This paper shows how preferential treatment becomes a mechanism of gentrification. It concentrates services, routine, and legitimacy on the corridor. It transfers uncertainty, cost, and stigma to adjacent streets.

The analysis draws on nine interviews and street observation in 2024. It links residents’ accounts to debates on rule-by-aesthetics, informality as governance, graduated citizenship, and infrastructure as lived politics. The paper argues that mismatched clocks explain how heritage-led redevelopment remakes value without uniform displacement, yet still produces slow pressure and exclusion.

Author

• Mohammad Shayan Ahmad, Northwestern University in Qatar