Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

136
Apart from the formulation of an entire hierarchy of development
plans, certain other related activities and processes, such as enabling
legislation, plan implementation, creation of urban and regional
planning institutions and on the job training programs, necessary for
institutionalizing the planning process, were also initiated. 47
The DMTP supervised the launching of "Action Master Plans Projects" for seven
major cities in the Kingdom. This effort constitutes the third major endeavor to treat city
development comprehensively, modeled on Doxiadis' Master Plan and regional master
plans for the country's five regions. Each master plan comprises fifteen "technical" reports
dealing with two subgroup of subjects: the "background studies" and reports concerned
with "applied aspects" of urban planning, that is the implementation phase. The DMTP
requested that firms help create planning departments to supervise implementation and
feedback. In addition to these three "generations", MOMRA in collaboration with the
United Nations staff, introduced a three-spike Physical Planning Project aimed at
developing a National Spatial Strategy, a professional training program, and supervising
the international consultants working with the Action Master Plans for the selected cities.
B. National Planning: Five-Year Development Plans
The impact of government preemptive urban decision-making and underwriting of
urban development was shown best during the 1970s and the 1980s. The 1970s brought
an unprecedented world demand for oil. Oil output virtually doubled between 1970 and
1973. Oil prices rose sharply, doubling in the same three years from $1.80 a barrel in
1970 to $5.12 in October 1973, to a whooping $11.65 a barrel as of January 1974.
Accordingly, oil revenues rose from $1.26 billion in 1970 to $3,107 billion in 1973, leaped
to $22,574 billion in 1974, and jumped to a phenomenal $98.1 billion in 1982. 48
In one
mere decade to 1975, the annual budget multiplied one hundred and ten times. 49 This oil
wealth has enabled the government to embark upon vigorous national and urban planning
schemes aimed at increasing the living-standards of the population by all feasible means
(higher income, better housing and hygiene, etc) and by upgrading the built environment
for projected future economic prosperity. Though progressive, these schemes were
wrought without public input.
During the last few decades of its promulgation, however, the Kingdom has pursued
a policy of balanced budgets starting in 1947. Compounded by extravagance spending by