Kabul Urban Survey - Groupe URD

6 URBAN MECHANISMS
Various urban development mechanisms are being operated in parallel at different levels of
decision making and at different levels of spatial strategy.
6.1 Different decision-making levels
All urban actors need to provide an answer to the following question: Who is in charge of
each step of programming decision making and project implementation? The question
remains open in Kabul with a lot of discussions as related above this document. “Who builds
a city?” 47 is another way of looking at the question of urban governance as Tom Sacher 48
writes in his report of Kabul issues.
6.1.1 At a national level and international control
In this period of institutional reconstruction, international assistance plays a major role in
supporting policy decisions and the different stakeholders involved in Afghan urban
reconstruction. The Kabul Municipality, the Government of Afghanistan, the MoUD and all
the other ministries concerned have held several consultative working groups and meetings
since 2001 with the international community, advisors and financial partners, such as UN-
HABITAT, UNDP, AKTC, and different donors, such as the European Commission, WB, GTZ
and ADB. After five years, the MoUD is starting to introduce reforms in its staffing policy and
its processes, but at present, financial issues are still the responsibility of international
stakeholders. Plans made at a political level must then be aligned with the available budget
and international conditions. Moreover, the capacity for urban governance has been
strengthened with urban institutions but in Kabul, the operational capacity of the MoUD
differs from that of other cities, give the specific independent status of the capital.
6.1.2 At the city level
As mentioned before, one of the major difficulties is the lack of urban planning capacity within
the KM. To understand and to cope with this absence of city governance, UN-HABITAT is
currently assessing urban planning skills with its City Profile Programmes. This analysis
process is being piloted in Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad before it is introduced to Kabul
Municipality. Its objective is to provide an inventory of fixtures in order to assess the
Municipality’s capacity in implementation, decision making, design and collecting taxes and
where the priorities lie for improving the situation.
6.1.3 At the community level
• Community-based capacity building
Stakeholders are currently considering the possibility of developing community capacity
building with a view to implementing a part of the rehabilitation process directly at the
affected population‘s level. “Community-based urban development programme for Kabul:
Building on rural experience” was one of the subjects presented by Mohamad Sharif from
UN-HABITAT at the colloquium on Development of Kabul - Reconstruction and Planning
issues in Lausanne. The success of the National Solidarity Programme (NSP), managed by
the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Rural Development (MRRD) for rural sector, has prompted
the idea of adapting this initiative for the urban sector. But, according to UN-HABITAT, there
are two specific problems with this approach:
- The urban population is not so much of a coherent social and cultural group as it tends to
be in villages. Some pilots are being carried out for small programmes in which a
selected group of families are brought together to form Community Development
Councils (CDC).
47 Schacher T., SDC, “Who builds a city?” in “Development of Kabul –Reconstruction and planning
issues”, issued from the Section two titled “ Social Challenges for Kabul” of the colloquium organized
by MUNTAZ (B)-NOSHIS (K)
48 Tom Sacher works for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
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