Faisalabad

The British built Faisalabad the way irrigation engineers build canals—by calculation, not by accident. Founded in 1890 as Lyallpur (named for Punjab Lieutenant Governor Sir James Lyall), the city was the centrepiece of the Chenab Canal Colony, the largest of Punjab's nine colonial irrigation projects that transformed over 5 million acres of semi-arid Sandal Bar wasteland into some of South Asia's most productive farmland. The urban plan radiated eight bazaars from a central Clock Tower like spokes from an axle—geometry imposed on desert, niche construction at civilisational scale.

Partition in 1947 shattered and remade the city overnight. Muslim refugees from East Punjab flooded in, driving district population from 69,930 (1941) to 179,000 (1951)—a 152% surge that overwhelmed colonial infrastructure but brought entrepreneurial energy. Industrial designation in the early 1950s attracted major mills: Kohinoor Textiles (1948), Crescent Mills (1950), Nishat Mills (1951). The Export Bonus Scheme of 1959 turbocharged textile exports. By the time the city was renamed Faisalabad in 1979, the industrial ecosystem was self-reinforcing—cotton grown in surrounding fields, spun in local mills, woven into fabric, exported through Karachi. A complete metabolic loop, the way a termite mound processes cellulose through every stage from harvest to digestion without leaving the colony structure.

Faisalabad earned the title 'Manchester of Pakistan' through sheer concentration. Over 512 large industrial units operate in the district—328 textile, 92 engineering, 92 chemicals and food processing. The textile sector alone accounts for over 65% of Pakistan's textile exports, which constitute roughly 58% of the nation's total export earnings. The city's district population reached 9.08 million in the 2023 census. Faisalabad is Pakistan's third-largest city but arguably its most industrially consequential—a cotton boll processing centre that has spun one fibre into an entire economy.

The concentration that created wealth also created vulnerability. Water tables drop as canal irrigation faces climate stress. The same monoculture logic that makes 65% of textile exports flow from one district means a single disruption—energy crisis, water shortage, cotton disease—ripples through the entire national export base like a blight spreading through a genetically uniform wheat field. Faisalabad's future depends on whether diversification can outpace the fragility that monoculture creates.