Urban planning, political system, and public participation in a century of urbanization: Kabul, Afghanistan

Abstract

This study examined the role of centralized national, decentralized supranational, and multiplied Foucauldian powers in a century of urbanization and urban planning in Afghanistan’s capital city. Centralized domestic and decentralized foreign powers are framed as vertical planning and technical rationality, whereas the multiplied Foucauldian power is framed as participatory planning and discursive rationality. Within this theoretical framework, the available urban planning literature concerning Afghanistan’s urbanization process from 1919 to 2020 is surveyed. The period starting from 1919 to 1921 marks the country’s independence and first major undertaking of urban development, whereas the period of 2018–2020 denotes the urban design framework preparation and tendency of its application for Kabul City. Three distinct paradigms; namely, biopower, complementary, and sporadic urban planning and development can be demonstrated by tracing the role of power and the political system in scope, method, vision, and authorization of urban plans for the country. In complementary and sporadic planning paradigms, the decentralized supranational powers guide urban development and planning, whereas the centralized domestic power guides urban development in the biopower paradigm. Within these paradigms, despite the claims and leaps of democratic political regime exercises, a few traces of participatory planning in upgrading projects of unplanned settlements occurred only recently. However, the urban planning regime has lacked discursive rationality and has not accepted meaningful citizen participation in the planning process.

Keywords

• urbanization
• urban planning
• modes of power
• participatory planning
• Kabul