Turning Walled City Lahore into a spectacle: the unintended consequences of heritage conservation

This paper sheds light on the antecedents and consequences of the much lauded ‘Sustainable Development of Walled City Lahore Project’ (SDWCLP), which was initiated by the Walled City Lahore Authority (WCLA) to conserve the tangible and intangible heritage of the ancient core of modern Lahore, which was seen to be facing destruction from commercial growth and neglect. Based on extensive fieldwork and archival research, we show how the WCLA sought to transform Lahore’s Walled City into a heritage tourism destination aiming to bring economic growth yet conserve its cultural heritage. Drawing upon critical heritage studies and Guy Debord’s concept of the ‘spectacle’, we illustrate how a convergence of structural violence and neoliberal government policies created the conditions in which a project like SDWCLP was made possible. The SDWCLP’s mission to preserve heritage attempted to commodify local life and historical sites and monuments for tourist consumption, turning the Walled City into a curated display detached from the lived life of the city. In shining a light on the unintended consequences of such heritage preservation projects, we add to and build upon the work of critical heritage studies scholars who study local class dynamics, tourism investment, planning discourses and sustainability of historical settlements.