HISTORICAL PUNJABI CITIES AND THEIR URBAN FABRIC TRANSFORMATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY ERA

Abstract Historical cities across the Islamic countries represent the widest complex of cultural homogeneous urban settlements in the world. Safeguarding historical cities in developing countries like Pakistan requires a particular attention towards complex and unexpected political socio-cultural events. The historical Pakistani cities are nowadays touched by a growing transformation process that are affecting many of their ancient sites and surroundings that are spreading with an unplanned strategy, from the dangerous perspective of endless resources. In this context it appears necessary to gain flexible urban analysis planning instruments in order to acquire a wide knowledge on a vast architectural heritage with the characteristic of adaptability along with the multilevel management stages of surveys and projects. Historic buildings contain the collective memory and their decline represents a loss of our identity. Some examples will identify how to contrast this annihilation process through the increasing awareness of the citizen involving local students and collaborations with the local municipalities in order to analyze the city with the traditional and advanced tools for an integrated urban methodology analysis. This contribution presents results of recent studies conducted by the author during the doctoral period concerning the Pakistani Punjab region and Multan city, analyzing the survey strategy and tools, taking into account a multidisciplinary method, local and international policies able to involve local resources, and increasing the local awareness regarding challenges in urban conservation and new design perspective in historical centers with attention to energy conservation.