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The city of Lahore, Pakistan has expanded by 20% in the past 20 years alone. Lahore’s exponential growth is fueled by a speculative real estate market that incentivizes quick trades of plots of land rather than constructing buildings. At the city’s ever-expanding periphery, real estate developers armed with village maps and legal teams scout for cheap land while agricultural landowners negotiate within extended families over whether to sell and demand higher prices based on their knowledge of market rates. In WhatsApp groups, overseas Pakistani investors carefully monitor land acquisition efforts by sharing news articles, personal photos and videos, Google Earth images, and copies of government documents in order to make their own assessments about the value of land. But while real estate is the most popular financial investment in Lahore, it is also extraordinarily risky. Developers sell land before they have acquired it; investors make high-risk, high-reward purchases in illegal projects; and even gains become losses due to an unstable national currency. Based on 28 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper analyzes how developers and investors navigate risk through the concept of rizq, or the Islamic belief that material wealth is provided by God. I show how rizq mediates the wordly economy of real estate and the other-worldly economy of Islam, dual economies between which all credits and debts are eventually settled. Reducible to neither Islam nor capitalism, I argue that rizq enables a uniquely audacious form of risk-taking that is transforming the landscape of Lahore. 

In 2016, the Government of Punjab (GoP) launched an effort to digitize land records in the city of Lahore. Extending a multimillion-dollar effort by the World Bank to digitize rural land records, the project viewed modern property rights as essential to urban empowerment. Traditionally functioning as inherited wealth, land in Lahore is a palimpsest of colonial property regimes, undocumented transfers, and generations of dispute and subdivision, issues that are magnified by the city’s density. By establishing clear ownership boundaries, the GoP project aimed to make land liquid, or an asset that could be leveraged for profit. The GoP project centered on eliminating patwaris, or traditional land revenue officials. Patwaris maintain paper records of landownership as old as the 19th century. In the eyes of the GoP, patwaris played a traditional, but ultimately obstructive human role. Under the digitization campaign, millions of pages of records were scanned, centuries-old maps were converted into GIS data, and new computerized land record centers were opened across Lahore. However, the work of patwaris remains fundamental to the digital database. Establishing the rightful ownership of land continues to require visiting homes, consulting neighbors, and tracing kinship ties, labor that depends upon the local and specialized knowledge of patwaris. In this paper, I follow the path of landed property from inherited wealth to liquid asset in Lahore. If the GoP’s digital database continues to rely upon its analog counterparts, then how is land ownership changing in the interplay between digitization and much longer-standing social and material practices? 

Landscapes of Rizq: Islam, Masculinity, and Speculative Real Estate in Lahore The city of Lahore, Pakistan has expanded by 20% in the past 20 years alone. Lahore’s exponential growth is fueled by a financialized real estate market that facilitates speculative trading of plots of land rather than constructed buildings. At the city’s ever-expanding periphery, real estate developers armed with drones and legal teams scout for cheap land while agricultural landowners collaborate to resist these efforts by refusing to sell or inflating prices. In WhatsApp groups, local and overseas Pakistani investors carefully monitor these events by sharing rumors, leaked documents, Google satellite images, and personal photos and videos in order to make their own assessments about the value of land. In the struggle to keep, buy, and sell land, several different approaches to placemaking collide—land as generational wealth; land as expansion of the modern city; land as entry to the middle class; and land as return to the homeland. Meanwhile, the financialization of land has taken a devastating toll on urban development, leading to the displacement of tenant farmers, unprecedented deforestation, and Lahore becoming the second most polluted city in the world. At the same time, speculative real estate in Lahore exists against the backdrop of Pakistan’s longstanding political and economic instability, which includes a largely unregulated economy, dramatic policy changes imposed by international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the Financial Action Task Force, and unpredictable currency fluctuations during the 2020 pandemic. While real estate is the most popular form of financial activity in Lahore, it is also extraordinarily risky. Developers routinely sell land before they possess it even though acquisition attempts often fail and government planning permissions to convert agricultural land into urban land are not always received. Local and overseas Pakistanis regularly invest in land despite the long history of fraud and turmoil in the market. Based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Lahore with developers, investors and landowners, this paper analyzes how these actors navigate risk through the concept of rizq, or the Islamic belief that despite one’s best efforts, their material possessions are ultimately provided by God. I show how rizq and real estate constitute dual economies between which all debts are eventually settled. Attending to the role of masculinity in this male-dominated market, I also examine how rizq entangles with financialization through the male archetypes of the patron, the patriarch, and the adventurer. At the intersection of Islam, masculinity, and speculative real estate, I argue that rizq enables an audacious mode of speculation that has devastated the landscape of Lahore. This paper presentation will be pre-recorded and read over drone footage collected during fieldwork that highlights the speculative landscape of Lahore. 

In 2016, the Government of Punjab (GoP) launched an effort to digitize land records in the city of Lahore. Recalling development economist Hernando de Soto’s view of land in the Global South as “dead capital,” at the heart of project was the belief that local empowerment hinged on establishing modern property rights in land. Traditionally functioning as inherited wealth, land in Lahore is often entangled with colonial property regimes, undocumented transfers after partition, and generations of dispute and subdivision—issues that are magnified by the city’s dense residential settlements. By establishing clear ownership boundaries, the GoP project aimed to make land liquid, or an asset that could be leveraged for future profit. The centerpiece of the GoP project was the removal of the patwari, the traditional land revenue official. Patwaris maintain manually drafted spreadsheets and maps pertaining to landownership in a given area, records dated as early as the 19th century. In the eyes of the GoP, patwaris played a traditional but ultimately obstructive human role. Framed in official reports as “predatory middlemen,” patwaris were accused of reducing the liquidity of land. Under the GoP project, millions of pages of records were scanned, centuries-old maps were converted into GIS data, and new computerized land record centers were opened throughout Lahore. However, the work of patwaris continues to be fundamental to the new digital database. Establishing the rightful ownership of land continues to require visiting homes, consulting with neighbors, and tracing kinship lineages, labor that depends upon the local and specialized knowledge of patwaris. In this paper, I follow the path of landed property from inherited wealth to liquid asset in Lahore. If the GoP’s digital database continues to rely upon its analog counterparts, then how are land records produced in the interplay between digitization and sociomaterial practices?