Innovations in Urban Mapping and Assessment for Inclusive and Strategic Urban Development

Afghanistan's urbanization has largely been informal. Cities have expanded rapidly over the past decade without special plans and limited access to formal land and housing. The result has been informal, low density sprawl; increasing social-spatial inequality; and significant infrastructure deficiencies. This is also based on the fact that in Afghanistan, basic information for urban areas does not exist, is updated, or not shared. As a result, MUDA (Ministry of Urban Developement Fairs) has been challenged to proactively guide the growth of Afghan cities and harness urbanisation as a driver of development. The stage of Afghan cities 2014/15 (SoAC), developed and implemented by 3 lead partners: MUDA, Independent directorate of local governance (IDLG), and Kabul municipality (KM), is the first ever comprehensive and reliable assessment of Afghanistan's 34 Provincial Capital Cities. It used recent and high resolution satellite images to extract key land use in dwelling data. This was combined with field checks MCT workshops to engage local stakeholders, improve data accuracy, and build human institutional capacities for improved urban data monitoring and use.
These dataset are now providing essential inputs to the new national enabling framework for urban development: the 'URban National Priority Programme' (U-NPP) and associated comprehensive urban development programme. Together these will lay the foundations for sustainable urban future in Afghanistan. Another important achievement of SoAC is improved capacity, transparency and coordination among central governments, like ministries and municipalities. The collborative approach is bein followed in the ongoing Urban-NPP Programme as a national and subnational governments continue to leverage the common forum established under SoAC