Competitive coexistence: Soviet town planning and housing projects in Kabul in the 1960s

This paper reviews 1960s' Soviet technical assistance projects related to town planning and housing in Afghanistan: the drafting of the 1964 master plan for the development of Kabul and the planning and construction of the first Mikrorayon neighbourhoods envisioned in this plan. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials from Soviet building institutions, it documents the circumstances and outcome of the Soviet town planners' employment in Kabul, and situates their involvement in the context of competitive coexistence between communist and capitalist development aid missions in Afghanistan. In conclusion, the paper underscores the multipolar character of knowledge transfer between unequal stakeholders. It proposes a reading of the contested history of the 1964 master plan for Kabul as an example for the emergence of a productive, conflictual space of negotiation between experts in the design of urban space from South, East and West, within which concordant visions of modern urban development acquired their shape and global reach. Ultimately, the general plan's vision of a tabula rasa reconstruction of central Kabul according to 1960s' international planners' wisdom had little effect. But its most significant outcome, the Mikrorayon neighbourhoods, provided an everyday experience of modern urban lifestyle for a minority until the development of Kabul was brutally interrupted by civil war and foreign military forces.