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Urban development in Sauda Arabia: Challenges and opportunities
Book reviews where historian, planner, entrepreneur and manager must meet.
Derek Lyddon Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh EH3 9DF
Urban Development in Sauda Arabia: Challenges and Opportunities edited by Saleh A1-Hathloul and Narayanan Edadan
Dar Al-Salam PO Box 88952 Riyadh (1995) 408 pp ISBN 9960-9054-0-3 The Arab-Muslim City: Tradition, Continuity and Change in the Physical Environment Saleh A1-Hathloul
Dar Al-Salam Riyadh (1996) 324 pp ISBN 9960-9054-1-1 When I visited Saudi Arabia with Professor Lyn Davies in 1994 to advise the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs on the revision of their planning system, I could find no useful books or other briefing on the subject. Now we have two excellent publications by no less a person than the Deputy Minister for Town Planning, who is an architect-planner and is distinguished both as an academic and as an administrator. Those who have never been there may too easily assume that Saudi Arabia has no planning system of the kind that we know in Europe or America. But in fact it has had, if anything, too much planning of that kind. Over the past 30 yr, during which time it has experienced phenomenal rates of economic growth and urban development, it acquired an elaborate planning system. It is one that is readily recognizable as the now old-fashioned European model of master planning, together with the conventional American system of zoning and sub-division control. The result has been, in the main urban areas, a grid-iron pattern of development with superimposed urban motorways and a combination of high-rise central business district and wide areas of low-density detached housing. It is astonishing to find, in the midst of this vast desert kingdom, a replica of American suburbia with endless strip commercial
zoning along the main road frontages. This, one fears, is the legacy of countless visiting planning consultants (Doxiadis played a prominent part), who evidently knew little of the country and had nothing better to offer. Saudi Arabia was not the only country in Arabia and elsewhere to suffer this invasion. This alien planning process, however, at least saved Saudi Arabia from the worst effects of the unregulated urban chaos found in so many rapidly developing countries. The superficial impression in a city such as Riyadh is of a remarkably well-ordered pattern of development, with well-defined urban boundaries. Excessive zoning has often led to premature subdivision, but the pace of development is such that those sites are rapidly overtaken and absorbed as the city expands. An incidental casualty has been the sweeping away or abandonment of many traditional villages and other settlements that stood in the way of the urban tide. Much vernacular building has been lost and there has been little concern (until very recently) to conserve these relics of an older civilisation. Now, belatedly but hopefully not too late (since rapid growth will continue for the foreseeable future) some Saudi architects and planners have begun to question the development pattern of the past 30 yr and to reaffirm Islamic concepts and the value of traditional Arab-Muslim vernacular building. Pre-eminent among those concepts are community and privacy. These qualities are precisely those that are ignored by low-density suburban development and detached single family housing. The traditional Islamic community is compact, close-knit, often concentric in form. The typical family home is joined to its neighbours and combines access to the street with strict privacy within its walls - the opposite of the American suburban home set well back from the road with its side yards and picture windows. The first of these two recent books is edited by Dr Saleh Al-Hathloul with Narayanan Edadan. It explains how the process of urbanisation has operated in Saudi Arabia and the development of its planning system. It then
51 moves on to consider alternative patterns of spatial development and housing design. It concludes by considering ways of reforming and strengthening the planning process, and reviews the challenges that lie ahead. With some twenty contributors (mainly Saudi but including some from overseas) the book combines academic and professional perspectives, and provides an invaluable survey of planning and development in Saudi Arabia. In the second book Dr Saleh AIHathloul considers the origin and characteristics of the traditional A r a b Muslim city, the contemporary environment, and how a sense of continuity between the past and the present might be re-established. In this he is concerned not only with aesthetic aspects but also with the social effects of disintegration, the loss of tradition and continuity, and the need for structure and regularity in social life. In addressing these issues the book has important relevance for those who work and live in a W e s t e r n culture. After decades of imported planning concepts and itinerant planning consultants, these two books show that Saudi Arabia now has much to teach us.
John Delafons Visiting Professor University of Reading, UK
The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Development John Kirkby, Phil O'Keefe and Lloyd Timberlake (eds)
Earthscan Publishing Ltd London (1995) 371 pp £14.95 paperback Environmental Economics Ian Hodge
Macmillan Basingstoke (1995) 205 pp £10.99 paperback Environmental Taxes in OECD Countries
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Paris (1995) 99 pp paperback The titles of all three of these books contain the environmentally-chic words of the early 1990s. In this con-
Derek Lyddon Edinburgh College of Art Edinburgh EH3 9DF
Urban Development in Sauda Arabia: Challenges and Opportunities edited by Saleh A1-Hathloul and Narayanan Edadan
Dar Al-Salam PO Box 88952 Riyadh (1995) 408 pp ISBN 9960-9054-0-3 The Arab-Muslim City: Tradition, Continuity and Change in the Physical Environment Saleh A1-Hathloul
Dar Al-Salam Riyadh (1996) 324 pp ISBN 9960-9054-1-1 When I visited Saudi Arabia with Professor Lyn Davies in 1994 to advise the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs on the revision of their planning system, I could find no useful books or other briefing on the subject. Now we have two excellent publications by no less a person than the Deputy Minister for Town Planning, who is an architect-planner and is distinguished both as an academic and as an administrator. Those who have never been there may too easily assume that Saudi Arabia has no planning system of the kind that we know in Europe or America. But in fact it has had, if anything, too much planning of that kind. Over the past 30 yr, during which time it has experienced phenomenal rates of economic growth and urban development, it acquired an elaborate planning system. It is one that is readily recognizable as the now old-fashioned European model of master planning, together with the conventional American system of zoning and sub-division control. The result has been, in the main urban areas, a grid-iron pattern of development with superimposed urban motorways and a combination of high-rise central business district and wide areas of low-density detached housing. It is astonishing to find, in the midst of this vast desert kingdom, a replica of American suburbia with endless strip commercial
zoning along the main road frontages. This, one fears, is the legacy of countless visiting planning consultants (Doxiadis played a prominent part), who evidently knew little of the country and had nothing better to offer. Saudi Arabia was not the only country in Arabia and elsewhere to suffer this invasion. This alien planning process, however, at least saved Saudi Arabia from the worst effects of the unregulated urban chaos found in so many rapidly developing countries. The superficial impression in a city such as Riyadh is of a remarkably well-ordered pattern of development, with well-defined urban boundaries. Excessive zoning has often led to premature subdivision, but the pace of development is such that those sites are rapidly overtaken and absorbed as the city expands. An incidental casualty has been the sweeping away or abandonment of many traditional villages and other settlements that stood in the way of the urban tide. Much vernacular building has been lost and there has been little concern (until very recently) to conserve these relics of an older civilisation. Now, belatedly but hopefully not too late (since rapid growth will continue for the foreseeable future) some Saudi architects and planners have begun to question the development pattern of the past 30 yr and to reaffirm Islamic concepts and the value of traditional Arab-Muslim vernacular building. Pre-eminent among those concepts are community and privacy. These qualities are precisely those that are ignored by low-density suburban development and detached single family housing. The traditional Islamic community is compact, close-knit, often concentric in form. The typical family home is joined to its neighbours and combines access to the street with strict privacy within its walls - the opposite of the American suburban home set well back from the road with its side yards and picture windows. The first of these two recent books is edited by Dr Saleh Al-Hathloul with Narayanan Edadan. It explains how the process of urbanisation has operated in Saudi Arabia and the development of its planning system. It then
51 moves on to consider alternative patterns of spatial development and housing design. It concludes by considering ways of reforming and strengthening the planning process, and reviews the challenges that lie ahead. With some twenty contributors (mainly Saudi but including some from overseas) the book combines academic and professional perspectives, and provides an invaluable survey of planning and development in Saudi Arabia. In the second book Dr Saleh AIHathloul considers the origin and characteristics of the traditional A r a b Muslim city, the contemporary environment, and how a sense of continuity between the past and the present might be re-established. In this he is concerned not only with aesthetic aspects but also with the social effects of disintegration, the loss of tradition and continuity, and the need for structure and regularity in social life. In addressing these issues the book has important relevance for those who work and live in a W e s t e r n culture. After decades of imported planning concepts and itinerant planning consultants, these two books show that Saudi Arabia now has much to teach us.
John Delafons Visiting Professor University of Reading, UK
The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Development John Kirkby, Phil O'Keefe and Lloyd Timberlake (eds)
Earthscan Publishing Ltd London (1995) 371 pp £14.95 paperback Environmental Economics Ian Hodge
Macmillan Basingstoke (1995) 205 pp £10.99 paperback Environmental Taxes in OECD Countries
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Paris (1995) 99 pp paperback The titles of all three of these books contain the environmentally-chic words of the early 1990s. In this con-