by Zahra Breshna

 

Urban memory does not reside in monuments.

It hides in pathways, alignments, and the unwritten logic of everyday space.

In Kabul, this memory lies buried—beneath asphalt, displacement, and fractured plans.

Kabul is a city built on the sediment of stories—some remembered, most erased. To walk its streets today is to sense the presence of what’s no longer visible: a layered cityscape of ruptures and continuities, resistance and reinvention. My research over the past two decades has focused on making these urban layers legible—not only through maps and models, but by tracing the lived memory embedded in Kabul’s historical fabric.

 

As an architect, urban planner, and daughter of the city, I’ve seen Kabul as a modern city that lived between the regulatory framework of the GRIDS and the lived experience of the GROUNDS, then shape-shifted to a fragmented postwar landscape then to a rapidly expanding informal metropolis struggling to retain its soul.

What happens when a city forgets itself? And more urgently: how can we help it remember—not nostalgically, but productively?

 

The project Urban Layers was born from these questions. Based on a series of analytical maps developed for my doctoral research and refined through fieldwork, oral history, and archival reconstruction, this work visualizes Kabul’s historical evolution across centuries. It distinguishes key phases.

This post is part of an ongoing series exploring how cities remember, forget, and regenerate through their spatial DNA. Kabul is not the exception—it is a lens.

 

Each map is more than a static image—it is a diagnostic tool, a memory device, a call to action.

 

These cartographies now form a conceptual backbone for URBAN STEPS, our international research and training initiative on urban transformation in contexts of fragility. By connecting historical mapping with community-based practice, academic research with field training, and local knowledge with digital tools, we aim to pioneer a methodology that is responsive, interdisciplinary, and resilient.

 

But this is not just about Kabul. Cities in crisis—be it due to war, displacement, climate collapse or authoritarian erasure—face a double loss: of material infrastructure and cultural memory. The latter is harder to quantify, yet essential for any sustainable future. We believe urban memory is not a luxury. It is a resource.

 

The blog series Urban Layers will unfold along thematic lines—each entry exploring one pair of guiding actions from the URBAN STEPS method:

Uncover / Study — Revitalize / Train — Activate / Plan — Bridge / Evolve — Navigate / Strategy

 

Together, they form a dynamic approach to cities as evolving ecosystems—where tradition does not obstruct innovation, but anchors it.

 

In Kabul’s case, memory is both fragile and defiant. Our maps show traces of a city that refuses to be flattened—by bombs or bureaucracy, ideology or indifference.

In reclaiming these urban layers, we do not simply look back. We build forward.

 

 

🧭 This post lays the foundation for future essays in the URBAN STEPS series:

from Grid vs. Grounds, to Fractal Governance, to AI-based Re-mapping of Memory.

🗺️ Visual Companion

A dynamic Urban Timeline, featuring your reconstructed plans from pre-Islamic phase to Islamization, 500 to 1880—1980—2002—to now, will soon be integrated into the Gallery section.

Dr.-Eng. Zahra Breshna is an architect, urban planner, and researcher with 20+ years of experience, specializing in developing innovative urban planning strategies for post-conflict and fragile contexts. Founder of URBAN STEPS, a cross-cultural urban learning and applied research program, and the Breshna Foundation for Culture, she bridges theory and practice, focusing on urban resilience, cultural heritage, and capacity-building for planners. Zahra has led strategic planning projects in Kabul, collaborated on architectural designs, and pioneered Afghanistan’s urban heritage safeguarding program. Her PhD and diploma in architecture from KIT focus on urban revival and transformation. Reach out to collaborate:

Email: info@urbansteps.org

Website: www.urbansteps.org

LinkedIn: @urbansteps

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