Islamabad

Islamabad is the capital city of Pakistan. Pakistan's leaders work here.

The city was planned on paper first, and then it was built.

Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan. It stands on the Potwar Plateau in the north of the country, at the foot of the Margalla Hills, about 14 kilometers from the older city of Rawalpindi.

Islamabad is a planned city: experts drew its streets, parks and neighborhoods before it was built. The 2023 census counted 1,108,872 people in the city, and 2,363,863 in the whole Islamabad Capital Territory around it.

Islamabad spreads across the Potwar Plateau 14 km northwest of Rawalpindi, at altitudes of 450 to 600 m, Universalis notes. The Margalla Hills, whose national park rises to about 1,580 m, lie to the north.

The 2023 census counted 1,108,872 people in the city, up from 1,009,003 in 2017 and 204,364 in 1981; it ranked tenth among Pakistan's cities. The Islamabad Capital Territory counted 2,363,863. A PIDE policy paper notes that people moved in far faster than the planners expected.

The Faisal Mosque is a big white building with a pointed roof. It looks like a giant tent.

Four very tall, thin towers stand around it.

The Faisal Mosque stands on the northwestern side of the city, near the Margalla Hills. Its design was chosen in a competition in 1969, won by the Turkish architect Vedat Dalokay. Work began in 1978, and the first regular Friday prayers were held there in 1988.

Its prayer hall has a folded roof, covered in white marble, that rises to a point 45 meters high. It was designed to look like a tent. Four minarets, twice as tall as the roof, stand at its corners.

Islamabad's 1959 master plan set aside about 18 hectares for a national mosque. An international competition in 1969 was won by Vedat Dalokay of Türkiye; the foundation stone was laid in 1976, construction began in 1978, and regular Friday prayers started on 24 June 1988. King Faysal of Saudi Arabia, after visiting the site, gave a large sum toward building it.

AramcoWorld's 1992 report explains the engineering: the folded, marble-clad roof rises to 45 m with no central pillar and no load-bearing walls. Its weight rests on four pairs of giant girders that rise from the corners, and the four minarets, on foundations 12 m deep, counterbalance them, holding the roof's edges down like tent pegs, the project engineer said.

Islamabad's streets make big squares, like a giant chessboard.

Each square has homes, shops and paths for walking.

The Greek planner Constantinos Doxiadis laid Islamabad out on a grid. Big roads divide the city into squares called sectors, each 2 kilometers long on every side. The plan had 84 sectors.

Each sector has five parts: four for homes and one commercial center, called a Markaz, with shops. Big roads go around each sector, and paths for walking run inside it, so people could walk to nearby shops and schools.

Doxiadis, whose firm Doxiadis Associates worked in many countries, planned Islamabad on a gridiron: a basic grid of 2,000 by 2,000 m divides the city into 84 sectors, and a second, natural grid is formed by the ravines that run across the site. Each sector has five sub-sectors, four residential and one commercial (the Markaz), ringed by roads with pedestrian networks inside, so residents could walk to neighborhood shops and schools. The plan took about four years.

Universalis describes the city as divided into five zones for different uses: administrative, diplomatic, residential, industrial, and a protected natural landscape with a national park, gardens and farms.

The Margalla Hills are right next to the city. Deer, foxes, monkeys and many birds live there.

The hills became a national park in 1980.

The Margalla Hills National Park lies just north of the city. It became a national park in 1980 and covers 17,386 hectares of slopes, gullies and limestone rocks.

Scientists who surveyed the park from 2019 to 2021 counted 117 kinds of birds, 27 kinds of reptiles and 30 kinds of mammals, among them barking deer, wild boar, golden jackals, red foxes, monkeys, fruit bats, leopards and pangolins.

Margalla Hills National Park, a wildlife sanctuary upgraded to a national park in 1980, covers 17,386 ha of slopes, gullies and limestone between about 450 and 1,580 m. A survey from December 2019 to March 2021, published in 2021, recorded 117 bird species from 48 families, 27 reptiles and 30 mammals, including barking deer, golden jackals, Asiatic leopards and pangolins; the authors report that leopard and pangolin numbers had risen.

Inside the city, Universalis notes, the protected natural zone includes gardens and farms raising dairy cows, poultry and vegetables. The Lok Virsa Museum, an ethnology museum, was founded in 1974.