Paper Title
Highlighting Urban Planning Issues Of Pakistan And Emphasizing The Role Of Planners Through Workshop Technique

Abstract
The urban planners, generally, focus on making a city physically resourceful, economically efficient, and environmentally sustainable. They analyze and research to improve already built environment and add new additions, if necessary. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, planners are not consulted before most of urban development projects, thereby ignoring and not coordinating with various planning departments, the decisions of government will become nothing but a blot on the future of already blighted cities. There is a dire need to empower the planning profession in order to improve urban contexts of our country. Sharing the field knowledge via hands-on workshops is a solution to better engage planners and help policy makers to internalize the findings. The Department of City and Regional Planning at University of Management and Technology, have gathered planners from all over Pakistan and asked for major planning issues and their subsequent suggestions to resolve these issues. Highlighted in the workshop, most of the core problems are related to housing, transportation and sustainable development. The paper is basically to channelize the findings of a workshop aiming at fostering discussions on urban issues among the professionals who are the ultimate stakeholders. Focusing on a multidimensional urban phenomenon, the paper aims to deepen the understanding of contemporary urban issues of Pakistan leading towards the solutions to be adopted by government officials to advance ultimately progress and sustainability. Index Terms - Built Environment, Decision Making, Planning, Planning Practices.