Anis Ur Rahmaan was born in Daryaganj, Delhi to an elite family, his paternal grandfather having been the Dewan of the State of Alwar and his maternal grandfather the owner of a major construction company, responsible for building the water supply and sewage systems for the Viceroy’s Lodge and the National Assembly. Anis’ father was a headmaster and eventually Deputy Inspector of Schools for Lahore, and consequently Anis moved schools frequently, attending government high schools at Jhaja, Bahadurgarh, Rohtak and finally Karnal, as father’s career progressed. In 1945, he enrolled at Delhi Polytechnic, where he took the pre-engineering course but was prevented from taking the qualification exam in 1947 due to Partition. He subsequently majored in double mathematics (BA) at Islamia College, Peshawar, before transferring to Government College at Lahore. He eventually managed to win a scholarship to Punjab College of Engineering and Technology (now UET Lahore), where he qualified as a civil engineer in 1961. On graduation, he worked briefly for the Military Engineering Service, then joined the Public Works Department as an assistant engineer. He was then transferred to the Town Planning Department due to a shortage of planners, and whilst there was nominated for a Colombo Plan fellowship available for a member of staff to study in England. As a result, Anis travelled to the UK in 1957 and enrolled in the Architectural Association’s post-graduate, six-month course in the Department of Tropical Architecture (DTA). In his autobiography, Anis recalls DTA head, Otto Koenigsberger displayed dismay that he was a civil engineer and not a qualified architect or planner, and requested him to keep this fact from his fellow students. On completion of the course, he returned immediately to Pakistan but was not eligible for promotion within the Town Planning Department as he did not hold a town planning degree. In a bid to solve this, Anis then won a place to do a MSc in City Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1959 and, shortly after his return in 1961 was appointed Deputy Director of Town Planning and then to the post of Director of the Lahore Master Plan for Greater Lahore. Following the completion of the master plan in 1967 Anis was appointed Director of Town Planning for the Peshawar Region and then, in 1969, become Director of Town Planning for the Punjab. From 1973-1975 Anis attended the University of Wisconsin, to complete his PhD, whilst simultaneously working as a research assistant. A post as Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay followed and then he was appointed as UN advisor to Saudi Arabia, for the UN Regional Development Planning Project, based in Riyadh, working on the master directive plan of Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah and of Ha’il, alongside urban plans for the regions of Al-Baha and Tabuk. He was to hold this position for ten years, also working on the Al-Uqayr Tourism Development Plan and advising the UAE on the Master Directive Plan for Abu Dhabi. He retired from the UN in 1987 and returned to academia, teaching at the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he was appointed full professor. Following his retirement from teaching, he served as President of the Institute of Planners Pakistan for the 2006-2008 session.
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