Integrating Disaster Risk Reduction into Urban Land use Planning: A Resilience Framework for Flood-Prone Peri-Urban Areas in Lahore, Pakistan

Abstract

Rapid and unplanned urbanization in developing countries has significantly increased exposure of peri-urban communities to natural hazards, particularly flooding. Lahore, one of South Asia’s fastest-growing megacities with a population exceeding 14 million, presents a critical case where the absence of disaster-sensitive land use planning has led to repeated flood disasters in low-lying and peri-urban zones, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Despite advancements in both urban planning policy and disaster risk reduction (DRR) frameworks in Pakistan, significant institutional and spatial planning gaps persist in translating resilience principles into actionable land use decisions. This paper argues that achieving urban resilience in flood-prone peri-urban areas requires the systematic integration of DRR into land use planning frameworks, guided by sustainable development principles. Drawing upon the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 11 and 13), and Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Policy, the study employs a mixed-method approach combining multi-scale spatial risk mapping, policy document analysis of 23 documents, and semi-structured key informant interviews with 24 stakeholders. The spatial analysis operates at two complementary scales: a district-level land use and land cover (LULC) analysis for 1990–2020 documenting the loss of over 400 km² of vegetation and a fourfold expansion of built-up area across Lahore district (Amin, 2024), and a peri-urban fringe analysis for 2000–2022 revealing that wetlands contracted by 73 percent and 87 km² of natural flood attenuation capacity was converted to built-up use. Together, these scales of evidence establish that Lahore’s flood vulnerability is the cumulative product of sustained, multi-decadal land cover transformation operating across the full urban system. The research identifies critical disconnects between the Urban Unit’s development plans and NDMA’s risk assessments, highlighting institutional silos as the primary barrier to integrated resilience planning. Qualitative thematic analysis reveals five dominant barrier themes: institutional silos, weak data-sharing mechanisms, regulatory enforcement gaps, community exclusion, and capacity deficits. The findings propose a context-specific Resilience Integration Framework (RIF) comprising four mutually reinforcing pillars: risk-informed spatial planning, institutional integration, green infrastructure embedding, and community-based risk knowledge integration. This research contributes original empirical insight to the emerging discourse on disaster-resilient urbanism in South Asian contexts, offering replicable policy recommendations for cities facing similar trajectories of climate risk and unregulated urban growth.

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