IT has now become a sort of trend for people belonging to metropolitan areas to move to the northern areas, or at least have a second home there, because the `mountains are calling`. While there is nothing particularly wrong with the trend, somehow the intention of moving to mountains transforms into a business opportunity for many.

These enlightened souls with money and `exposure` invest in land and establish only hotels. Because, you know, that is the only way to help the local community.

Somehow, that dream of living the isolated life and giving back to the nature turns into an establishment with rooms and room services.

Last year, I had the privilege of speaking to a young metropolitan a Christopher McCandless-turned-Donald Trump who has established a huge hotel in Hunza, and is expanding it aggressively. He did not want to leave out even an inch of space for making money out of the famous `Attabad View`. It seems that the lake itself is receding because of such exploitation, as if it has had enough.

The lake is only a decade old, but instead of understanding the event of its birth which was a calamity, if you remember the lake`s growth and its mood, the mountain-loving businessmen grabbed every opportunity to feast on its beauty without learning anything from its creation. The person concerned ended up creating a social divide which is as sharp as is the environmental divide.

The man-with-dreams said he planned to buy more land, build more infrastructure, and to develop a society of sorts. Though on a small scale, a niche property for the privileged. He was a real estate tycoon in the making. I say `in the making`because had he been an established hardcore tycoon, he would have established a lavish `town` in Hunza already even if he had to take one of the Passu Cones down, and onein Skardu, with Upper Kachura Lake in the middle, and one in Chitral, which will of course have a polo ground of its own, and, indeed, one in Gwadar, right next to the serene blue beach. This would have happened simply because natural landscape and features naturally belong to the nature-loving enthusiasts of the country ... the ones with lots of money.

But, frankly, our little tycoon in not the only one for whom empathy is a word that exists in dictionaries only. We are a society wherein decision makers would have the audacity to even plan to demolish Lahore`s famous historical monument of Chauburji that was apparently coming in the way of the Orange Line Metro Train, or to dig away the Ardi Mountains at Kirthar National Park to expand lavish housing colonies, or to build infrastructure on precious agricultural land.

That being so, it is unfair to expect tycoons in the private sector to understand that growth and infrastructure that revolve around erecting buildings only displace local communities, while traditional neighbourhoods vanish and the true identity of a place is lost. We lack empathy and planning, especially at Grade 20 and above, and the tourism sector is no exception.

I wonder why it is so difficult to comprehend that `development` and creating tourism opportunities do not necessarily mean `construction activity`.

Azad Kashmir, Baltistan, Chitral, Gwadar, Thar and all such areas are losing the essence of native communities,folk wisdom and, indeed, cultural heritage.

Our business tycoons continue to usurp Pakistan`s valuable land, gradually gnawing away layers of local environment and lifestyles. Occasionally on my travels when I tread on a terrain that is rough and unpaved, it is a moment of utter delight as that evidently suggests the lack of such opportunists reaching the remote regions.

Cities grow and infrastructure is needed, but is it necessary to do it at the cost of natural landscape and cultural heritage? While the world is making efforts trying to go back to its roots, we are bent on completely eradicating ours. We are getting obsessed with the idea of rapid construction; and in the process the essence of communities, folk wisdom and cultural heritage is losing its importance. This is another step back for a country like Pakistan which has rich cultural and traditional roots. Considering the pace at which we are `developing` Pakistan, we could perhaps change its name to the `Islamic Republic of Housing Societies of Pakistan`.

S. Sundas Rawalpindi