Why it looks like this

Faisalabad began as Lyallpur in the 1890s, a market town planted in the newly canal-irrigated plains of Punjab. Its designers gave it a signature: eight bazaars running out from a centre marked by the Clock Tower, so the core reads from the air as the crosses of the Union Jack flag.

The town became the trading hub of the canal colonies and then Pakistan's textile capital, and a large industrial city grew around the little flag-shaped heart, which is still packed with markets today.