Every few months, the government rediscovers Pakistan’s youth. Conferences are held, banners are printed, slogans trend on social media, and speeches praise young people as the “future of the nation.” Yet once the cameras are switched off, nothing changes in the streets, neighbourhoods, or daily lives of the same youth being celebrated. What we see is not a serious youth policy, but a publicity-driven obsession with symbolism.
Pakistan today is facing one of the largest youth transitions in its history. Studies consistently show that nearly two-thirds of the population is under 30, and millions of young people enter adulthood every year with expectations that the economy simply cannot meet. This demographic reality should have triggered long-term planning years ago — not only in jobs and skills, but also in how our cities are designed to absorb young lives. Instead, the state behaves as if merely acknowledging the youth bulge is enough. Celebrations have replaced planning.
Labour market evidence paints a far more troubling picture than official claims suggest. National labour surveys and independent research repeatedly show that educated youth face higher unemployment than the uneducated, while a large share of young people are neither working nor studying. International development reports warn of a growing category of youth that is economically inactive, socially disengaged, and psychologically frustrated. These are not marginal trends. They reflect a deep structural failure not only of the economy, but of urban and social policy that leaves young people disconnected from opportunity.
That disconnection begins well before the labour market. It begins in the everyday geography of our cities. In Lahore and other major urban centres, youth encounter cities that are expanding outwards but hollowing from within. Vast tracts of prime urban land are locked away in elite enclaves, subsidised government residences, and state-owned estates that serve a few while excluding the many. At the same time, residential expansion pushes relentlessly into the periphery, producing urban sprawl without community life, without public spaces, and without social infrastructure.
This neglect is not accidental. It is rooted in a governance model that treats youth as a slogan rather than a responsibility
In this urban form, youth are left with nowhere to go. There are hardly any open-access parks, playgrounds, or sports grounds where young people can play, train, or even walk safely. What cities do offer are elite recreational spaces, golf courses, private clubs, and gated facilities all maintained on valuable land yet inaccessible to the public. Physical activity, which research consistently links to mental health, discipline, and social stability, has been quietly pushed out of public life.
The transport system deepens this exclusion. Cities are built for cars, not people. There are no safe cycling lanes, no culture of walking, no cycle stands, and no protection for those who try to move without a vehicle. For a young person without access to private transport, the city itself becomes hostile. Unsafe roads, long commutes, and fragmented neighbourhoods discourage movement, interaction, and healthy habits. Youth do not need monuments; they need spaces, and they need cities that allow them to move through those spaces safely.
This neglect is not accidental. It is rooted in a governance model that treats youth as a slogan rather than a responsibility. Local governments, constitutionally responsible for parks, playgrounds, community centres, neighbourhood planning, and non-motorised transport, remain weak, underfunded, or absent. Urban priorities are dictated from above, favouring visible infrastructure such as roads, flyovers, and real estate expansion, while social and recreational infrastructure is treated as optional. Youth policy cannot survive in cities designed without youth in mind.
What makes this contradiction more striking is the government’s obsession with numbers that look good on paper. Youth programmes are announced with impressive targets, training figures are inflated, and employment outcomes are framed selectively. Instead of allowing independent data to guide policy, statistics are often manufactured to justify decisions already made. When governments try to control data, they stop listening to reality. Youth policy cannot be built on curated dashboards and press briefings. It must respond to what surveys, urban studies, and lived experience are clearly showing.
Multiple studies on urban youth across developing countries warn that prolonged exclusion from public space leads to long-term scarring, including declining physical health, rising anxiety, lower lifetime earnings, and deep mistrust of institutions. Pakistan is already seeing these patterns emerge. Idle youth do not remain idle forever. They drift into frustration, informal survival, exploitation, or permanent disengagement from the state.
The real test of seriousness is not how often youth are praised, but whether local governments are empowered, funded, and held accountable to serve them. Youth policy cannot be run from conference halls and media campaigns. It must be built street by street, park by park, cycle by cycle, and neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Until the state stops celebrating youth for optics and starts delivering for them in real terms, Pakistan’s so-called youth dividend will continue to erode.
Youth deserve policies shaped by evidence, not applause; by data, not decoration. Until the government allows facts to speak for themselves without polishing, packaging, or politicising them, the gap between youth on posters and youth on the ground will only widen.