2. Materials and Methods
District 4 is located in the center of the city as shown
Figure 1. There are 369,455 residents according to Kabul Municipality, and most people who own transformed houses are from the middle to upper classes, while residents living in courtyard detached houses are from low to middle-income families. The district has a land area of 11.63 km
2 of which 83.1% is the urban area located in the central part of the city [
86].
In the course of our study, we discussed with the Kabul Municipality the availability of information and documents related to laws, regulations, and rules. In October 2021, aerial photographs and shape-files were collected, and some type of literature was reviewed until January 2022. The City Planning Department of Kabul Municipality provided a high-quality aerial photo of district 4. In addition, we also received rules and regulations regarding building a detached house from the Kabul Municipality Construction Permit Department. The study areas were mapped using the most recent enhanced and high-quality aerial photo of 2018. Additionally, we observed the field and took pictures of the buildings to update the features and elements of our map between January and February 2022. For physical feature analysis, a few characteristics such as the Building Coverage Area (built-up area) on a plot, the number of floors, and the typology of the buildings were considered during our physical element’s analysis. We also observed the construction materials to determine the quality of the buildings.
In the next stage, to gather information related to the environmental and social impacts, we targeted the residents of detached houses. These residents were affected by the emergence of apartment buildings. We developed a semi-structured questionnaire including general instructions, personal information, and specific questions about apartment buildings and their impacts on environmental and social aspects. During our field visit, we conducted a paper-based interview. Two surveyors were assigned to administer the questionnaires. All the aspects of the questionnaires were tested on a small group of students in advance. The area was selected based on the willingness of residents to contribute and participate (resident’s representatives’ sessions), security, accessibility, and consultation with the Kabul Municipality authorities. The degree of transformation of housing typology was the main reason we selected the study areas. Aerial photos and our observation of buildings in each part of district 4 led to specifying the level and degree of transformation. Our research team used a simple random sampling method to collect data on social and environmental issues from affected residents living in these areas. A total of 32 responses were received from individuals, while approximately 40 houses were surveyed.
Table 1 clearly describes the processes, including categories, methods, sources, and when the activities occurred. In order to analyze the questionnaires related to environmental and social aspects, descriptive statistics were applied to frequency counts and percentages. Likert scale data analysis was used to determine the weight given to variables such as ventilation, natural light, shadow effect, energy consumption, air pollution, sound pollution, and privacy. Likert scales with numerical indexes provide an effective way to judge people’s opinions [
70]. To analyze the resident’s satisfaction scores, (5), (4), (3), (2), and (1) were substitutes for strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. It was then divided by a total number of responses, which is 32, to obtain the satisfaction index. Then, it was divided by the total number of responses, which was 32, to obtain the satisfaction index.
To correlate the perceptions of the residents with the physical form of the houses in the study areas, impacts on the environment and social issues were classified into different types. For each type, there are specific conditions that indicate the intensity of the impact. In order to analyze all of the above issues, specific terms have been used that correspond to the actual condition. The plots were analyzed in relation to the areas around them. To simplify it, the impacts are divided into Satisfactory, Fair, and Critical Conditions:
Ventilation is calculated on the basis of existing apartment buildings around the detached house. According to the criteria, the building should have at least three sides left open in order to be considered in a Satisfactory Condition. As long as two sides of a plot of land are enclosed by an apartment building and the other two sides are free, that plot is categorized as being in Fair condition. In contrast, a detached home that is surrounded by apartment buildings on at least three sides is considered to be in Critical Condition.
Natural light, shadow effects, and energy consumption are evaluated based on available solar radiation from the east, west, and south. The effects of shade were studied in the morning, during the day, and in the evening. It is considered satisfactory if a detached house receives sunlight from at least two sides. In other words, the two sides of the detached house are not lined with apartment buildings. If only one side of the house receives sunlight, the condition of the single-family house is considered Fair. Detached homes may be classified as Critical if two or more sides are obscured by apartment buildings.
Sound pollution is analyzed based on where the houses are in relation to the streets. This is because traffic is responsible for most sound pollution. For this reason, we considered the types of streets when measuring the effects of sound pollution. The Satisfactory Condition is for detached houses to be found on dead-end streets, where there is no traffic outside but only the owners’ cars. In addition, they are not placed close enough to apartment buildings to hear sounds coming from human activity inside the apartments. Detached houses located on sub-main streets and not in direct view of apartment buildings are valued in Fair Condition. Among the detached houses most affected by sound are those located on collector streets. They are also being exposed to traffic sounds, human activities, and noise from crafting. Our assessment is based on the availability of streets, and the main street is not included.
Air pollution is evaluated based on NEPA; Afghanistan Environmental Protection Agency. The evaluation was based on the average of the main air pollutants as specified by the National Protection Environmental Agency: PM2.5 = 75 μg/m3, PM10 = 150 μg/m3, NO2 = 80 μg/m3, SO2 = 76 μg/m3, and O3 = 100 μg/m3.
Finally, a house has an acceptable degree of privacy if there are no apartment buildings surrounding it. Meanwhile, a house is considered in Fair Condition if it is not directly faced by apartments or if there are some apartments on the side of the house with head-level windows. On the other hand, a detached house surrounded by apartments would be rated as a Critical Privacy Condition.
4. Analysis and Discussions
Apartment buildings are sprouting up all throughout the city. Less than 30% of the total urban area is constituted of planned resident districts. These areas were mostly designed and implemented in accordance with Russian Master Plans produced during the 1960s and the 1980s. District 4 was one of the city’s first residential districts, built according to the designs stated above. The design relied on a regular distribution system and detached housing. Moreover, three-quarters of the district’s land area is developed. The district is attractive due to its centrality and accessibility, as well as the affordable illegal apartments. An overwhelming level of urban growth resulted in multiple apartment buildings in these places. As a result, overcrowding, transportation congestion, building congestion, and a transformation in housing typology occurred. As a result of these challenges, several issues, including environmental and societal issues, have arisen. Poor ventilation, shadowing, air pollution, sound pollution, and privacy are just a few of the issues. Our paper’s time and capacity constraints precluded us from focusing on numerous additional concerns related to the rise of apartment buildings.
High-density residential ventilation is heavily influenced by urban morphology and street-to-building interaction. As wind circulates around and between buildings and built-up areas, it increases pedestrian comfort, thermal comfort, and pollutant dispersal [
88]. Reduced wind velocity, urban heat, noise, and pollution all impede the urban environment [
89]. As a result of reduced airflow between buildings, human health is being targeted. In our case, apartment complexes also obstructed airflow in the study locations. The wind hit most buildings from two sides or less. This indicates that the majority of detached houses have Fair to Critical Conditions.
Meanwhile, a building’s orientation, window ratio, and wall ratio all have an impact on energy efficiency. Urban energy consumption is widely acknowledged as an essential component of daily life and economic activity [
90]. Buildings adjacent shade the residences in the targeted region, lowering cooling demand in the summer and increasing heating demand in the winter [
91]. South-facing rooms receive a lot of sunlight in the winter. In the morning and evening, the east and west sides are the brightest. Because detached houses are bordered by apartment buildings, they generate long shadows during the day.
Figure 8 shows how thoroughly the research areas were assessed in terms of the shadow effect. In the winter, the effects of shadow are closely tied to energy usage. At the same time, consumption is also strongly related to ventilation when the wind direction is blocked by apartment buildings. Therefore, energy consumption is considered in two cases, winter and summer. In addition, the material of the house also plays a role in heating and cooling costs. Reinforced concrete is made of metal and stone and these two materials are efficient conductors of heat. In our study areas, there are more affected houses made of reinforced concrete. Consequently, they suffer more from heating and cooling aspects. Another consequence of urbanization is an increase in noise pollution. Because cities’ land use is more prone to produce road traffic and other human activities, noise pollution has a severe influence on public health, particularly for urban residents [
92]. Noise is psychologically annoying and can trigger strong feelings such as rage, disappointment, anxiety, and melancholy [
93]. As a result of changes in the body system, long-term exposure to high-level noise damages the cardiovascular system, brain system, and endocrine system [
94]. Our research analyzed this concern based on the types of streets and traffic.
As the population grows, food production, transportation, and housing demand may increase, which could further contribute to air pollution [
95]. The issue of air pollution is one of the most pressing concerns for residents. Almost all respondents expressed concerns regarding air pollution. In our research, we also found that apartment building owners complain about pollution during the winter. We, therefore, evaluated the air pollution of both study areas based on the report of the National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) [
95]. This report indicates that their focus was on the main air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, NO
2, O
3, and SO
2) according to
Table 10. In addition, we also considered the Average National Standards for Air Quality in Kabul city [
96] according to their evaluation, which was conducted in two districts around our study areas in February 2021. All the above pollutants were higher than the NEPA standard. The report confirms that the responses are accurate and match the report of the National Environmental Protection Agency. For this reason, we gave air pollution a Critical condition evaluation mark.
According to various definitions, privacy is mainly the need for space for visual, physical, and psychological separation [
97]. In essence, privacy serves three main functions: limiting social interaction, developing strategies for managing it, and maintaining identity [
98]. The uncontrolled construction of urban areas often results in many problems, including the difference in building heights, and the close proximity of buildings, especially in developing countries. We researched privacy in the context of unexpected buildings that were constructed at varying heights and distances.
As a result of the above evaluation, we were able to categorize the effects of various issues on detached house conditions into different categories as illustrated in
Figure 9. In
Figure 10, the type of impact on a detached house is shown. Type-A, for example, indicates that all variables such as ventilation, natural light, energy consumption, shadow impact, noise pollution, and privacy are marked with negative marks. Likewise, the B-type received the second-lowest score for these variables after Type-A. Therefore, Type A and B are determined to be in Critical Condition. The effects of these issues are classified as Type C when three or four of the aforementioned variables are acceptable to the residents. However, Type D and E have consensus from residents in no fewer than five variables. Determining the number of variables determines the types of impacts as shown in
Figure 10. There are many subtypes embedded in each type, based on the similarity and closeness of effects. Depending on where the detached houses are located in relation to apartment buildings, they are classified into these sub-types.
Table 11 and
Table 12 summarized the findings from both study areas, taking into account
Figure 9 and
Figure 10. The issue of the impact of apartment buildings on detached houses is clearly stated. As shown in
Table 10, the majority of houses in Taimani are of types A and B. As a direct consequence, the majority of detached houses in our study area are in Critical Condition. The status of two detached houses in the same table is now Fair and is heading toward Critical, as shown in light blue.
Table 11 in Parwan-2 depicts the impact of apartment buildings on detached houses. Nearly half of the houses are classified as Type A or Type B, according to an analysis. However, 50% of the houses were rated as being in acceptable condition. Based on the current rate of development, the Satisfactory Condition is likely to worsen to a Fair Condition in the coming years. The most major issue, according to our analysis of the variable effects, was air pollution. Noise pollution came in second and privacy came in third. Residents in both study areas provided fair to good marks to other variables. The parties’ privacy and identities are protected as long as they respect each other’s rights. At last, the emergence of apartment buildings has a significant impact on both study areas.
Based on
Table 13, the results of the above tables indicate that these issues are significant in study areas. We discovered that our study areas were most influenced by the factors that had the lowest scores. A Type-B assessment earned the highest scores for both Poor (X) and Moderate (∆) with 54 and 37, respectively. There is no Good(O) score for Types A and B. However, Type-C also achieved moderate to poor scores. This type has a higher incidence of mutations than Type-B. Our evaluation gave Type-D the mark of Good (O) score of 47. Based on all of the factors that have the greatest impact, the Critical condition obtained the highest score. The Satisfactory Condition takes second place, while Fair Condition take the last place.
The results of each study area are shown separately in
Table 14. Taimani has a lower satisfaction rate than Parwan-2, according to our physical analysis. In both study areas, however, the number of residents who are satisfied with the minimum condition is similar. Meanwhile, our physical inspection revealed that there are more houses in Taimani with Fair conditions than in Parwan-2. Three houses are classified as being in Fair Condition, two in Taimani and one in Parwan-2. Even so, since the level of satisfaction in Parwan-2 is nearly 10% higher than in Taimani, Critical Condition is lower. Our research discovered that both study areas in District 4 are vulnerable; however, the northern area is the most likely to be impacted.
We can confirm that the residents’ concern about the critical condition is accurate based on the physical analysis and our findings. The identity of these areas as low-rise housing areas has been lost. Despite the fact that these areas were preferred for our study, District 4 and all other residential neighborhoods confront the same challenges. Current trends in housing development appear to suggest that the issues will get worse in the future. In such a case, early intervention against apartment building developments in low-rise residential neighborhoods is truly unavoidable.
This study has enormous practical significance. The emergence of apartment buildings increased the number of housing units from 97 to 395. The difference between the actual number of houses in the back and the current number is approximately 295. Consequently, there was overcrowding and heavy building congestion in the study area. However, it also caused numerous environmental and social issues. The transformation of the housing typology from a replacement perspective has left half of the area in critical condition from a health and living standpoint.
To conclude, overpopulation, pollution, and the use of fossil fuels are just a few of the ways humans harm the environment. Human interactions with the environment have resulted in climate change, land degradation, air pollution, poor ventilation, and housing congestion. This environmental transformation is the result of people meeting their own needs. Drilling holes, building dams, and constructing new houses can all have a significant impact on the environment, either positively or negatively. Hammond in 1995 [
99] theoretically justified this relationship between human activity and the environment. As a result of this interaction, human health is impacted by polluted air and water, degraded services, and a number of other factors [
100]. As a consequence of our research, we have concluded that housing transformation has a profound impact on society. These adjustments (Morris and Winter, 1975) may make a substantial difference to our living and health conditions.
5. Recommendations and Suggestions
Our entire housing typology must be preserved in planned residential neighborhoods in order to limit problems in planned neighborhoods. Despite the existing laws and regulations, detached houses may still be converted into apartments in the future. Besides these laws and regulations, it is imperative to pay attention to the actors and stakeholders involved in the enforcement of construction projects. According to our investigation, buildings are currently monitored, inspected, and enforced by just one organization, the Kabul Municipality. Recent figures indicate that there are too few engineers overseeing and inspecting the construction work in Kabul compared with the number of houses. We learned from our interview with Kabul Municipality officials that about 40 engineers are responsible for monitoring and checking residential buildings. Kabul’s urban area consists of 359,178 residential plots, out of which 291,948 need to be checked by monitoring officers (Kabul Municipality). As a result, a large number of construction activities cannot be monitored due to a shortage of monitoring officers. Therefore, it is essential to involve many stakeholders to reach the goal of monitoring demand. For this very reason, there is a huge need to change the top-down model to a bottom-up one. Engineering Associations and Residents’ Councils (Gozar Assembly and Community Development Councils) are suitable from both a technical and a social perspective. By including these stakeholders, rules and regulations can be enforced more easily, as well as responsibilities can be shared more equally. Furthermore, because the neighbors will be impacted, they should be a part of the decision-making process. As part of the agreement, owners should be obligated to comply with rules and regulations. In addition to the above points, the following could also prevent the transformation of housing typology:
Land uses rules and regulations should be revised based on the current situation. In addition, zoning plans with detailed specifications should be prepared to control the development in every district of Kabul city.
To prevent the further emergence of apartment buildings in the study areas, residents’ councils should be part of decision makers for construction permit issuances. In this case, the violation of the construction rules shall be minimized.
To obtain more effective results from involving stakeholders, Kabul Municipality should provide some awareness programs such as training, workshops, and installing informative billboards in residential neighborhoods.
In order to discourage the further practice of apartment buildings in the planned residential districts, taxes should be increased and the disallowed floors should be confiscated.
Some solutions to the above problems can only be applied in specific cases; however, to reverse the situation, the source of the problem must be removed. One solution is to reverse the main layout in the study area based on the primary design in a detailed plan. The main layout of the study area should be based on the cul-de-sac streets, as shown in the detailed plan. In this case, the green stripe returns to its original shape. Therefore, a significant area for recreation and other uses will be provided.
The space can also provide children with a specific area to play, and the sound they create will be concentrated in a specific area. Such a space may be helpful for houses that do not normally receive direct sunlight during the day. The width of the green stripe in
Figure 11 should be approximately 25 m. These types of green strips are frequently included with detailed plans for the city of Kabul.
Meanwhile, to reduce smoke that contributes to air pollution, the quantity of emissions from a heating system could be reduced through the use of a filtration system. It is critical to remove wood particles and charcoal smoke from the air. This can be achieved by deploying an effective filtration system for the removal of small particles. In apartment buildings, in particular, filtration systems have the potential to reduce the amount of smoke leaving the building.
Privacy as an important social issue is difficult to address. Most of the zones planned around Kabul are designed according to the detailed plan concept. One of the strictest rules in the past was to keep the interior of the house out of sight. As apartment buildings started to emerge, it became evident that those rules were not as intended. Today, any changes to the area would not make a significant difference. As an alternative, residents may install invisible windows to block the view of the inside of the apartments during the day. A little relief might come from the municipality of Kabul by applying human-headed window restrictions on the direct sides of the buildings.
At the same time, residents still need to use artificial lights to reduce their visual discomfort. Kabul benefits from plenty of sunshine, allowing the installation of solar panels on rooftops. Renewable energy sources remain the most effective way to meet the growing demand for electricity [
101]. Momand’s research indicates Afghanistan has the highest solar energy capacity in South Asia [
102]. As a result, solar energy is the most efficient form of supplying artificial light and reducing wood and coal combustion. Residents’ health and living conditions could be improved somewhat by the aforementioned solution. However, removing the impact will only be possible if the cause of the problem is removed.
6. Conclusions
Uncontrolled urbanization leads to chaotic development, particularly in underdeveloped countries. Kabul, as the capital, was also affected by urban development, which resulted in a transformation in housing types. In the last two decades, apartment buildings in low-rise residential zones increased in 1970 Master Plan-based planned neighborhoods. The transformation of houses as a result of building substitution densified residential areas. Building substitution resulted in the transformation of houses, which further densified residential areas. Kabul city’s densification faced numerous urban challenges, including severe housing conditions, infrastructure shortages, and an increasing number of squatters. The appearance of these apartment buildings caused overcrowding, air pollution, traffic congestion, and an increase in sound pollution. Kabul’s planned residential areas experienced densification as a result of vertical housing transformation. This resulted in a scarcity of many resources as well as increased pressure on public spaces, activities, facilities, and public spaces. The situation had a significant impact on the living conditions in the study areas, both indoors and outdoors. As a result of the transformation of houses into apartment buildings, a number of environmental and social issues have arisen. Residents’ health suffered directly as living conditions deteriorated. Infectious diseases, chronic diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and mental health issues all spread as living conditions deteriorate. Our examination of the physical shape of the research areas allowed us to gain a better understanding of the study areas’ precise situation. Following that, we solicited feedback from the residents to assess the impact of the housing transformation on their quality of life. Their health complaints were accompanied by diseases such as respiratory, orthopedic, asthma, headaches, fatigue, and mental and visual impairments. We established several criteria to better determine the relationship between a physical aspect and residents’ opinions. Based on our criteria, we classified the issue’s impacts into three categories: Critical, Fair, and Satisfactory. According to our findings, more than half of the houses are in critical condition. To avoid the construction of additional apartment buildings, it is critical to focus not only on laws and regulations, but also on their enforcement. As a result of our findings, we have proposed some solutions that may help to mitigate the impact of these issues.