Since these letters were written, I have become involved with the San Francisco Bay Area Friends of Afghanistan who are in the process of setting up a sister-city program between San Francisco and Kabul. I will be helping them host the visit of Mr. Rashid Janbaz, the Director of Planning for Kabul, during his three-week visit to California and Nevada in January 2003. So I will not be going to Kabul to teach until May 2003 at the earliest. --Pietro
Welcome! On these pages I am compiling ideas for a short course in planning to be taught in Kabul in early 2003.
Draft Outline for the course, as of November 11
A little background on how this came about: I have wanted to study and work
in Central Asia since the mid-1980s. I have known Sheraga Gulshan Raz and his
son Khalid Raz since I was an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley studying urban
geography; they told me about Afghanistan and their hope that peace would return
to their country some day so that Afghans would get a chance to rebuild.
Fourteen years later it looks like that may be possible. So I contacted Sheraga
who put me in touch with Dr. Mardonzai of the Afghan Support Center who, in
turn, referred me to Dr.Waheed Momand of the Afghan Coalition in Fremont. I
met Dr. Momand and Dr. Farid Younos on October 29, and gave them my resume
and objective statement.
Several days later I sent the same information to Nadia Tarzi with a cover
letter.
On November 4 Mohammed Nagib Poya called to extend an invitation from the Society
of Afghan Engineers to teach a short course in Kabul. I am delighted, excited,
and honored; I have decided to consult as many people as possible about how
to approach putting together such a course so that the time will be well spent.
On November 5 I sent out an "invitation
to brainstorming" letter; Steven Bodzin of the Congress of the New
Urbanism kindly forwarded it to a CNU distribution list.
The responses I have gotten range from very cautious to sharply critical even
of the idea of going to Afghanistan to teach. Here are the replies from Steve
Haines, Allan Jacobs
and Cheryl Parker, Besim
Hakim, Manjeet Tangri,
Nasser Madani, and Matthew
Smith. I did receive two encouraging notes, one from Geoff
Dyer and one from Lucien
Steil. I will follow up on Mr. Steil's recommendation to contact the Aga
Khan Development Network and Archnet.
The responses alerted me to some (I fear only a few) of my mistaken presumptions.
They have helped me clarify a pedagogical stance: I can talk about my own experience
and present ideas, successes, and failures from a Californian perspective; my
hosts, naturally, will decide what they find useful and how they might apply
it. Mostly I will be the one learning, and I will be asking as many questions
as making statements. A November 9 follow-up
letter to the 'brainstormers' is a clarification of this shift in attitude.
So far I have received responses from Matt
Smith, Ali Madanipour,
Besim Hakim (who has given me a substantial bibliography to pursue), Manjeet
Tangri, and Lucien Steil.
Based on the general character of the responses I think I am getting closer
to an appropriate method and approach.