The people next door

September 13, 2026In the narrow lanes of Peshawar’s historic Qissa Khwani Bazaar, stories have never been difficult to find. For centuries, travellers, traders and merchants arriving from across the subcontinent, Afghanistan and Central Asia passed through the bazaar.

They came to trade, but many also stayed to rest, meet fellow travellers and exchange stories of distant cities, families, wars, journeys and ordinary life over cups of traditional qehwa (tea). The name itself — Qissa Khwani, the “Market of Storytellers” — carries the memory of that tradition.

Storytelling was not simply entertainment. It was a way of connecting people, passing knowledge between generations and making sense of a world that many experienced through the stories of those who had travelled beyond their own communities.

But what happens when people no longer need to gather to tell stories? A smartphone can connect someone in Peshawar with a relative in Dubai within seconds. Friends scattered across several cities can remain in constant contact through a Whats.

App group. Social media can bring together people separated by thousands of kilometres. And yet, in the same apartment building or housing society, neighbours may live for years without knowing one another.

This is one of the cultural changes occurring imperceptibly in modern-day Pakistan. The country is becoming more urban, more mobile and more digitally connected, even as some of the physical spaces and social relationships that once gave people a sense of community are transforming.

For 60-year-old Zubair Shah, that change is personal. “When we were young, families were not divided the way they are today,” Shah. “Grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and children often lived together.

There were differences, there were disagreements, but people remained connected.”Shah has witnessed the transformation that has taken place quietly across generations.

The movement from large joint families towards smaller households, migration from villages to cities, changing forms of employment and the arrival of new technologies have all altered how Pakistanis spend their time — and how they relate to the people around them. Yet this is not simply a story about a lost past.

Across Peshawar and Lahore, the evidence suggests something more intricate. Traditional forms of community are weakening in some places, but community itself has not disappeared. It is being reshaped by urbanisation, migration, conflict, economics and technology.

The old sense of belonging. In earlier generations, the community one lived in provided a space where people learned how to live. Family, neighbours and shared institutions formed a network of companionship and collective support.

Weddings, funerals, illnesses, celebrations and hardships were rarely treated as purely private affairs. They brought people together. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of the most important spaces for this interaction was the hujra.

For writer and cultural commentator Rokhan Yousafzai, the changing role of the hujra captures much of what has happened to community life more broadly. “Traditions and customs collectively shape the culture of a society,” he says, “but culture is never static.

It evolves with time.”Once central to community life, the hujra was more than a physical meeting place. People gathered there to discuss local issues, exchange information and participate in community life. Weddings and mourning alike brought people together, but the conversations held in the hujra extended far beyond ceremonies.

Different generations shared the same space. Elders spoke from experience; younger people listened, questioned and learned. Knowledge was transmitted without a classroom, textbook or formal curriculum.

For Yousafzai, the most important thing that the hujra provided was dialogue. And it is dialogue, he believes, that is increasingly under pressure. “When those conversations disappear, an entire informal system of cultural transmission can weaken with them,” he says.

Television was one of the first technologies to change how families spent their evenings, reducing the need to leave the house or gather in communal spaces. Mobile phones and social media brought a far more profound shift.

People could remain connected with distant relatives and friends without necessarily being physically present with those around them. “Technology itself,” Yousafzai argues, “is not necessarily the problem. The concern begins when it replaces direct human interaction.”But Peshawar’s changing community life cannot be explained by technology alone.

KP remains predominantly rural, but urbanisation is becoming increasingly significant, particularly around Peshawar. Population growth, migration, improved roads, education, employment opportunities and technological development have expanded people’s horizons while simultaneously changing the environments in which relationships are built and maintained.

Dr Ibrar Hussain of the Department of Social Work at the University of Peshawar describes the transformation as significant, particularly in urban centres such as Peshawar. “The traditional extended family, close neighbourhood relationships and institutions, such as the hujra, once provided people with social support, a sense of belonging and collective responsibility,” he says.

“Urbanisation, migration, economic pressures, nuclear families and digital communication have changed those patterns.”But Ibrar Hussain cautions against interpreting this transformation simply as the death of social values. Community life, he argues, is taking new forms.

“The challenge is to preserve mutual support, trust and collective responsibility while adapting to modern realities. Inclusive community spaces, youth organisations and neighbourhood initiatives can help prevent social isolation and strengthen social cohesion,” he says.

The distinction between the disappearance of old forms of community and the disappearance of community itself is crucial. Author, analyst and researcher Khadim Hussain highlights that across KP, people still gather for weddings, charitable activities, funerals and other occasions.

“The difference is the intensity and nature of those interactions,” he says. When conflict breaks a community. Khadim Hussain points to decades of war and religious militancy as another major force behind the transformation.

“Prolonged conflict and extremism,” he argues, “have generated fear and distrust in many parts of KP, restricting the free interaction that once characterised community life.” Displacement has added another layer to the problem. Families forced to leave their homes because of terrorism and counter-terrorism operations do not simply lose a physical address.

They can also lose the social networks, routines and relationships built over generations. When communities are disrupted in such a harrowing manner, rebuilding them is not as simple as reconstructing houses. Social connections take years to develop, and some may never fully return.

Security restrictions have also affected movement and interaction. “The expansion of security check posts and associated restrictions,” Khadim Hussain says, “has created additional impediments to free movement between people from different parts of KP.” Together, conflict, displacement, changing economic relationships, security restrictions and technology have reshaped the close social associations that once characterised many communities across the region.

But the same tension appears in a very different setting hundreds of kilometres away. In Lahore, it is not conflict or displacement that most clearly illustrates the changing nature of the community. It is the city itself.

When proximity does not mean belonging. In 2002, Mian Abdul Rehman, who lived on the outskirts of Lahore, moved to one of the city’s well-known and expensive housing societies because of his business. Better business opportunities, education for his children and modern facilities for his family were the main reasons behind his move.

Over time, his business grew and the family gained access to many of the conveniences of urban life. But there was a cost that was harder to measure. Today, one of his sons and one daughter live abroad, while another son and two daughters live with him.

The family has gained mobility and opportunity, but Rehman says the move to the city also distanced him from a community that, in his village, would instinctively come together in times of celebration and grief alike. He was painfully reminded of the lack of community in 2009 at the time of his mother’s death.

Rehman was in Dubai. His wife and children were at home in Lahore, but no one from the neighbourhood came to support the family through the loss. Once word reached his village, however, people travelled to Lahore.

Those who had shared his joys and sorrows for years were the ones who stood beside his family once again. His experience captures the central paradox of this story: physical proximity does not necessarily create social closeness.

Rahman’s example reflects a broader transformation in Pakistan’s social structure. Statistics, the country’s urban population rose from 36.44 per cent in 2017 to 38.88 per cent in 2023. The annual growth rate of the urban population was 3.67 per cent, compared with 1.88 per cent for the rural population.

During the same period, the number of cities with populations exceeding 500,000 rose from 14 to 22. As people move into cities, the social landscape of residential areas changes with them. The transformation is also visible within families.

The average household size declined from 6.39 people in 2017 to 6.3 in 2023. The difference may appear modest, but it forms part of a broader transition away from extended family structures towards smaller household units.

For sociologist Dr Asma Sami Malik, the difference between rural and urban social life is particularly significant. “In rural society,” she says, “family, kinship and neighbourhoods come together to form a strong social support system.

On occasions such as celebrations, illness or death, people do not necessarily regard what is happening as a private family matter– they participate collectively.”When those same people move to cities in search of employment and better opportunities, their social and cultural environment changes.

Even while living among large numbers of people, an individual can become distanced from old relationships and support systems. The rural society’s sense of “we”, Malik argues, can begin to turn into an urban “I”.

That change can be seen in the physical design of the city, but it is not caused by architecture alone. Naeem Murtaza, who has researched the history of Lahore, says homes in the neighbourhoods of old Lahore were not simply places of residence.

They were part of a wider social system. Many families had lived in the same areas for generations, meaning that knowing about one another’s domestic circumstances, relationships and needs was part of everyday life. Streets, mosques, shops, baithaks and community gatherings created regular opportunities for people to encounter one another.

Lahore’s expansion has altered that pattern. In newer areas, families from different cities, districts and social backgrounds have settled in the same housing developments. Even when they live on the same street, their jobs, schedules, schools and social circles may be entirely different.

The result is a city in which people can be surrounded by others without necessarily becoming part of one another’s lives. The modern gated communities. It would be easy to blame Lahore’s gated housing societies for this decline in community.

Research, however, suggests a more complicated picture. A 2020 case study of DHA Lahore examined the gated community as a particular urban environment of class-based social exclusion, while a 2023 study of domestic workers living in Lahore’s gated communities highlighted social and economic inequalities and unequal access to public spaces.

Yet another 2023 study of gated and non-gated residential areas found that the presence of a gate or wall alone did not determine whether residents experienced a sense of community. What mattered more was social interaction.

The research found that a sense of community in both types of neighbourhoods was strongly associated with opportunities for residents to meet one another, participate in shared activities and take part in community affairs. In other words, the problem is not simply that the gates of a housing society are closed.

The more important question is whether the doors to human connection are open within those gates. Psychologist Fatima Tahir says that a sense of connection and belonging is among the basic psychological needs of human beings.

When people move away from traditional environments, family networks and longstanding social relationships and enter settings where there is less certainty that others will help in times of need, feelings of loneliness, insecurity and psychological stress can increase. Social media can preserve relationships across cities and countries while simultaneously reducing the need for face-to-face interaction.

But this does not mean technology has destroyed the community. It means the definition of community is changing. People from Pakhtunkhwa can now maintain relationships with relatives and friends around the world.

Lahore residents can build networks through schools, workplaces, religious activities, sports, social-media groups and shared interests. Older neighbourhoods often produced interaction simply because people shared the same physical and social spaces. Modern life increasingly requires people to create those spaces deliberately.

Building the next community. Cities will continue to expand. New housing societies will continue to emerge.

Families will continue to move in search of education, employment and better opportunities. Children will continue to leave their hometowns and, increasingly, the country. Trying to recreate the past exactly as it was may neither be possible nor desirable.

Culture, as Rokhan Yousafzai points out, is not static. The challenge is to ensure that the values carried by older forms of community — mutual support, trust, respect, dignity, dialogue and collective responsibility — do not disappear simply because the spaces that once nurtured them have changed.

That could mean more neighbourhood events, public meetings, youth organisations, shared public spaces and local initiatives. It could mean designing cities not only around houses, roads and commercial centres, but around opportunities for people to meet one another.

The issue, ultimately, is not about choosing between the village and the city, tradition and technology, or the past and the present. It is about whether a society can carry its sense of collective responsibility into a future in which people are increasingly mobile, private and digitally connected.

For Mian Abdul Rehman, the answer to that question emerged when he lost his mother and received no support from the neighbourhood where he had lived for years. The city had given him progress, opportunity and modern conveniences.

But in that moment of grief, it reminded him of something much older: Living close to people and being close to people are two very different things. Pages. Pakistan.

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