Commercial Centrality in Islamabad: A Data-Driven Evaluation of Blue Area as the City’s Functional Downtown

Abstract

Islamabad’s rapid spatial expansion over the past two decades has produced a series of emerging commercial and mixed-use clusters, prompting renewed debate over the location and function of the city’s true downtown. While several peripheral developments have adopted downtown-oriented branding, the question of whether these areas exhibit the empirical characteristics of a central business district (CBD) remains unresolved. Drawing on a multi-year dataset of commercial property valuations (2018–2024), locality-level price-per-square-foot trends, index trajectories, and short-term market momentum indicators, this study evaluates whether Blue Area and its planned extension, the New Blue Area, continue to constitute the functional commercial core of Islamabad. Using comparative case analysis, the findings demonstrate that Blue Area consistently records the highest land-value density, greatest long-run appreciation, strongest short-term growth, and the most stable commercial performance among all examined districts. These trends align with globally recognized features of CBDs, including agglomeration economies, vertical development, institutional clustering, and transit centrality. Peripheral localities, by contrast, display value patterns associated primarily with residential-led expansion rather than metropolitan commercial centrality. The study concludes that Blue Area remains Islamabad’s de facto downtown, both theoretically and empirically, and that policy emphasis on vertical densification within the central corridor is consistent with observed market dynamics. The research contributes to the understanding of commercial hierarchy in planned capitals and offers evidence-based insights for urban development policy in Islamabad.