Kabul is an emergent metropolis where glimpses of hope and progress are immanent in every corner, where construction in the private sector is booming, where people are determined to restore their city, where they can finally use a comparatively peaceful phase in their history to start recovering, marrying, organizing their lives, embellishing their surroundings, and catching up with the rest of the world in terms of education, culture and technology. And yet Kabul is also a place where there is still no progress in solving civic urgencies, where the international organizations’ inclination to self-protection disrupts the everyday life of residents, where an emerging security-industrial complex is driving an urban civil war, where public spaces are economically and politically contested, where urban planning ideologies collide, and where authorities face the challenge of land titling as a venture that will ultimately reveal the very nature of nation building and human rights in Afghanistan.
Several observations in Kabul verified that is not only the probability of random suicide attacks that threatens security in public space. An obscene space consumption and heavily armed appearance of international agencies for the sake of their security ultimately violates the resident’s freedom of movement and personal feeling of safety in public space. Moreover, social privileges of expatriates justify the creation of constricted public spaces to which Afghans are not permitted entry. At the same time public spaces and public services are contested by powerful Afghan factions who continue their civil war on parliamentarian and municipal seats – it is the ordinary citizen that loses the battle over land, employment, traffic, and public space every day time and again.
In Western media it is the Taliban who receive most of the attention and are portrayed as the enemy. In reality various forces are enemies to common welfare and solely guard their own groups’ and affiliates’ interests. It nearly seems that all the various shades of conflict and violence that occurred consecutively within the history of Afghanistan manifest themselves in alleviated manner but simultaneously in contemporary Kabul. Colonialism nowadays wears a global dress and appears with honourable but half-hearted humanitarian ambitions. In the 70s-80s it was the Cold War and today it is another global war being fought out on Afghan territory. And another legacy, the civil war, is being continued between the warlords and powerful tribes and families.
There are several burning questions to be investigated that are directly related to these major conflicts: Why is there still no supply of electricity and water in Kabul? Why is there still a problem of shelter? Why can’t urban planning keep up with the pace of Kabul’s growth? Why is the majority of the population still unemployed? Why is the security situation getting worse? Why can people still not move freely through public spaces or gather in peace? And why is there substantial disagreement about strategies how to solve these problems?
The tabloid paper ‘Kabul – Secure City, Public City’, aims to outline the problems that architecture and planning are facing in contemporary Kabul, and approaches general civic urgencies from the point of view of architects and planners. It is a supplement to Volume Magazine #15 and was conceived in the wake of an urban fact finding trip to Kabul in October 2007 that took place as a sequel to the Archis RSVP events series. The tabloid comprises contributions from professionals who live and work in Kabul as well as from RSVP visitors and was designed by Nicolas Bourquin and Jeannette Gaussi.
Niloufar Tajeri is an architect who lived and worked in Kabul and Herat in 2004/2005. She conceptualized and organized the Kabul RSVP event and is part of the editorial team of ‘Kabul – Secure City, Public City’.
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