Kabul today stands as one of the clearest symbols of Afghanistan’s urban development crisis, a crisis that has taken root not only in the city’s physical landscape but also in its social, economic, and environmental structures. What has brought Kabul to its current state is the convergence of several factors: the large-scale return of refugees, structural poverty, weak urban management and planning, and a sharp decline in international resources. Together, these have transformed the capital from an administrative center into a bloated, unplanned, and unstable entity. In recent years, Kabul has become a refuge for millions of homeless and displaced citizens fleeing drought, economic insecurity, and systemic social discrimination, only to face a more complex and unrelenting crisis within the city itself.
In reality, Kabul has never benefited from a comprehensive, enforceable urban development plan. The city plans of past decades were never updated and, even when introduced, encountered political obstacles, legal disputes, and institutional barriers. After the collapse of the Republic in August 2021, these weaknesses deepened further. The Taliban regime neither possesses the organizational capacity for urban planning nor understands the interconnection between urban development, social justice, and environmental sustainability. Consequently, the very concept of urban planning has been reduced to ad hoc, arbitrary, and politically motivated short-term decisions.
The return of millions of refugees from Iran and Pakistan, alongside hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, has disrupted Kabul’s already fragile urban equilibrium. The shortage of land for horizontal expansion, the absence of coherent land-use policies, and the city’s limited capacity to absorb new populations have made Kabul almost ungovernable. According to a 2023 World Bank report, urban construction in Kabul has largely concentrated in affluent, high-income neighborhoods developed mostly through private investment that contributes little to affordable housing for middle- and low-income groups. This pattern of concentrated development has deepened class divisions and spatial segregation, turning Kabul into a visible arena of stark contrast between wealth and poverty. Although the Taliban repeatedly claim to address class inequality in urban spaces, the gap not only persists but has grown even more pronounced than before.
In the absence of a land management system and urban development framework, the housing market has become entirely driven by profit. The unprecedented rise in rental prices has forced many families into informal settlements. Today, more than 70 percent of Kabul’s population lives in neighborhoods outside the city’s formal boundaries and without access to essential urban services (UN-Habitat, 2024). These settlements, often built on mountainsides or seized land, are a direct consequence of the absence of oversight and the lack of a comprehensive urban development plan. Kabul had long been fragmented into self-built neighborhoods and unplanned districts, but the collapse of the Republic has pushed the entire city to the brink of systemic failure, a danger whose consequences could lead to collective urban collapse.
From the perspective of urban development, Kabul has fallen victim to a phenomenon that can best be described as “disorderly population accumulation.” This condition stems from administrative centralization, forced migration, and the uneven distribution of investment across other Afghan cities. The resulting demographic and economic concentration has intensified pressure on the capital, turning Kabul’s crisis into a reflection of the broader failure of national development policy and the collapse of Afghanistan’s urban planning framework. Alongside this, the breakdown of urban service systems has become a fundamental challenge. Water supply networks, sewage systems, public transport, and basic urban infrastructure are all in critical condition. Field studies and international reports warn that if the excessive extraction of groundwater continues, Kabul will face an acute water shortage within the next five years. This alarming projection reflects the absence of integrated resource management in the city—a metropolis that cannot remain livable without coherent policies governing water, land, and population.
In such an environment, the Kabul Municipality and other Taliban-affiliated institutions have focused on short-term, symbolic projects rather than strategic, long-term urban programs. Initiatives such as paving alleys or demolishing old houses without a comprehensive plan do not improve the quality of life; instead, they heighten social instability and exacerbate economic hardship. While more than two-thirds of the population lives in informal settlements, the Taliban’s so-called “standardization policies,” often implemented through the destruction of people’s homes, have violated spatial justice and completely eroded public trust in urban institutions. At present, Afghanistan’s municipal bodies face a severe shortage of qualified professionals and lack any strategic vision for future development.
The fundamental issue is that urban development in Afghanistan continues to unfold in the absence of independent, specialized institutions. The Ministry of Urban Development and Housing has been weakened, and local institutions lack technical and professional capacity. No data-driven system exists for monitoring urban transformations, no land information bank, no building registration system, and no mechanism for tracking population growth. As a result, development decisions are based on estimates, political influence, and personal interests. Nearly the entire governance system, including sectoral institutions, is now led by clerics trained in Pakistani madrasas, an arrangement that places the entire urban apparatus at serious risk.
Experiences from other countries demonstrate that overcoming such a complex and multidimensional crisis requires the integration of key components: an enforceable master plan, a transparent land management system, and independent urban planning institutions. Nations such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and Türkiye have managed to curb unregulated urban expansion and institutionalize sustainable development by creating independent planning bodies and implementing comprehensive urban strategies. None of these elements, however, exists in Kabul. The city’s Urban Design Framework (2018) remains stalled at the implementation stage (see The Pathology of Kabul’s Urban Design Framework, published by Hasht-e Subh Daily in 2019). Land registration has become nearly impossible due to overlapping ownership claims, while municipalities lack financial independence. Consequently, urban development has been reduced to small, fragmented projects devoid of strategic coherence.
This raises a crucial question: what can be done to reverse this situation or, if it persists, what will become of Kabul and other Afghan cities, and of urban planning as a whole in the country? In the author’s view, the first step must be a shift from a technical-operational approach to a strategic one. This shift would help establish a clearer long-term vision for the future of Kabul and urban development more broadly across Afghanistan. Given its complexity, Kabul urgently needs an independent and professional urban development authority, an institution composed of urban planners, engineers, sociologists, and environmental experts, capable of making evidence-based decisions free from political interference.
The second step involves reforming the land management system and clarifying property ownership, an essential foundation for any urban development initiative. Without this reform, affordable housing plans, informal settlement regeneration, structural reform of the city, and balanced urban growth remain impossible. Another vital issue is the re-evaluation of how urban services are distributed. The concentration of resources in certain areas while others remain deprived has severely disrupted spatial justice. Over the medium term, this imbalance will further fragment the city’s structural fabric and obstruct its development process.
In a mid-term perspective, Kabul’s development must be connected to a network of regional cities. The author argues that investing in the “New Kabul City” project is a waste of time and resources; instead, decentralizing and relocating some administrative and economic institutions to neighboring provinces could ease demographic pressure on the capital and promote balanced national development. The experiences of Iran, Türkiye, and Malaysia demonstrate that establishing satellite or complementary cities around a capital is the most effective way to redistribute population and capital. It is essential to recognize that urban development cannot be achieved solely through engineering or architectural tools. It first requires good governance, civic participation, and a link between development and social justice. The current crisis in Kabul, in fact, challenges the very capacity for urban planning and development in Afghanistan.
If a future political system replaces short-term, reactionary decision-making with institutional reform in urban planning and development, there remains hope for Kabul’s renewal. Otherwise, the Afghan capital will soon cease to be the administrative heart of the nation and instead stand as a stark symbol of national developmental failure. In this context, the role of the media, universities, and research institutions is central. Systematic documentation of urban development problems, investigative reporting on the consequences of unplanned growth, and analytical studies of the social impacts of uneven development can foster public dialogue and civic pressure for reform. The future of Kabul is the future of Afghanistan, and the fate of the country’s development ultimately depends on rebuilding its urban planning institutions.
You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:
