Kabul, Afghanistan: a case study in responding to urban displacement

One in every six people on the planet currently experiences the kind of living conditions depicted in the recent film Slumdog Millionaire, set in the sprawling slums of Mumbai. Forecasts by UN Habitat and others suggest that slum communities like those shown in the film will double in size to two billion people by 2025, accounting for one in four of the world’s population, making slums the fastest-growing form of human settlement and a key facet of global urbanisation. With urban centres projected to double in size to four billion people by 2025, the equivalent of a city of nearly two million people will emerge every week of every year over the next 16 years. The challenges generated by such unprecedented growth clearly require urban stakeholders to adopt new approaches to urban management. While sufficiently daunting, however, projected global population growth fails to reflect urban growth attributable to displacement. Enduring conflict and frequent natural disasters in parts of the developing world encourage or force migration to urban centres at rates that accelerate and exacerbate the urbanisation process. As a result, approaches to urban management must also account for the humanitarian consequences of urban growth attributable to displacement.

This article presents Kabul, Afghanistan, as a case study in urban displacement, with a particular focus on some of the factors and effects of growth, recent institutional responses and projects supported by USAID/OFDA. The Kabul case provides insights into the merging and co-location of acute and chronic needs amid significant growth, resulting in new levels of disaster risk and increasing the likelihood of a large-scale humanitarian crisis.