No abstract

This study examines the history of master planning in Kabul city and how the government approaches segregation through urban planning. There are five master plans made for Kabul city, starting in 1964, with the others being conceived in 1970, 1978, 2011, and 2018. The civil war exacerbated the ethnic segmentation in Kabul city. The city is ethnically divided mainly among the different ethnicities of Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara, which live in three different zones. The urban planning literature and master plans for Kabul city are surveyed, starting from the 1960s with the first master plan to the 2018 Kabul urban design framework. The first three master plans were designed on technical rather than communitive rationalities, with authoritarian planning. However, the fourth master plan of 2011 was developed through engagement with citizens and addressed the ethnic segregation in the city in abstract ways. The fifth masterplan, Kabul urban design framework, was a step backward in participatory planning; it also ignored the ethnic segmentation in the city by unequally distributing the future economic zones, administrative and facilities hubs. The past master plans have ignored the ethnic segregation of the city; there is no detailed plan on how the city will approach segregation through urban planning.

The Pashtun, Tajik, and Hazara ethnic groups, divided into three zones, make up most of the ethnic segments in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. However, each ethnic settlement is subdivided into smaller geographical communities. In this research, we want to validate the existence of these ethnic communities and how these communities are valuable to the residents of Kabul city. We also aimed to analyze what facilities the community shares and why it is crucial to consider these communities while redeveloping the informal settlements in Kabul city. We did a literature review on ethnic segmentation, chose a case study in district 13 of Kabul, interviewed the residents and head of the community, and distributed socio-economic questionnaires made by the Ministry of urban development and land Afghanistan in three streets to determine how the ethnicities are subdivided. Ethnicities are divided into smaller sub-ethnic communities based on their migrated rural districts. People live together because of a communal identity known as Qawm. Each community shares a mosque, and to redevelop their areas, they want to be relocated near their current community of ethnicity. Moreover, ethnicity is a significant factor in choosing where to live in Kabul. Hence, the government policymaker must consider the importance of these communities in redeveloping informal settlements.

Objectives: This study aims to highlight the difficulties caused by the motorized transport system in the downtown of Baniyas city, Syria, and analyse the applicability of a non-motorized transport system based on a deep understanding of the nature of the society and the needs of the users. Methods: this study used the observation of the author and data obtained from official reports to identify the challenges in the downtown area caused by the current traffic system, a new non-motorized transport system was designed and proposed to the users through an online questionnaire using Qualtrics online survey tool. After the pilot sample testing the questionnaire was distributed to the targeted group of 326 participants with (11 invalid responses, 17 unqualified respondents and 298 valid responses). The data from their responses was exported to SPSS statistical analysis software then the qualitative data was analysed using SPSS and MS Excel. Findings: The most profound of the results is the significance of the relationship between the social reasons as a factor to prevent people from cycling and the variables of age and gender. The participants' level of being affected by social reasons varied depending on their age and gender. And when giving people the opportunity to cycle in better conditions after implementing the proposal, it was also found that the participants were positive towards the idea of riding the bicycle regardless of their gender, but according to their age, people reacted differently, the younger people had a positive opinion, but the relatively older people were neutral towards it. Novelty: It is being the first study to target the downtown of Baniyas city, and designs an approach to improve it in addition to design the non-motorized transport system questionnaire which was an original work of this study.