Does the Rulebook Favor the Compact City? A Policy Agglomeration Orientation Index for Urban Land-Use Regulation in Lahore, Pakistan

This dataset accompanies the study “Does the rulebook favor the compact city? A Policy Agglomeration Orientation Index for urban land-use regulation in Pakistan” and contains the underlying data, coding information, and reproducibility files used to construct and analyze the Policy Agglomeration Orientation Index (PAOI). The main dataset comprises 35 policy and regulatory documents spanning national, annual-plan, provincial, and Lahore-specific instruments. The unit of observation is one policy document. There are 34 distinct instruments because L-06 represents a draft/final version variant of L-05. The dataset operationalizes the PAOI through 31 ordinal indicators grouped into six pillars: (1) density, (2) mixed use, (3) transport, (4) land allocation, (5) governance, and (6) inclusion. Each indicator is scored from 0 to 3, where 0 = absent, 1 = weak, 2 = moderate, and 3 = strong. Provisions are coded directionally according to whether they support compact, connected, mixed-use, efficiently serviced, and inclusive urban development.