Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

146
report by the prestigious High Commission For The Development of Arriyadh (HCDA)
reads:
Past development projects [due to rapid growth] soon became
obsolete...public utilities and other development projects were often
designed and built without reliable existing data or an up-to-date
systematic development strategy. Private investment in commercial
and industrial projects were often made by imitation and intuition
without accurate measures of the expected economic returns. 65
This corroborates Brian Berry's observations on the usually perfunctory physical
planning approaches employed in Third World and Developing countries. "It is a planning
at the municipal level within highly Centralized national government." 66 The approach was
often "sectorial or project oriented" (for example, documents that illustrate land use,
transportation, or a housing project). These plans were usually assembled by international
consultants without diligent regard to conte;:t\ial imperatives or a deep study of
consequences and their relationship with the surrounding urban networks. Foreign
schemes abound and Western-born models such as those of the "City Beautiful" planning
approaches are marketed by foreign consultants. Moreover, these efforts do not coincide
with national planning because the latter tend to be economic and the former (the municipal)
tend to be physical (Berry, 1973) 67
SUMMARY
Several factors have forged the Saudi planning model. The government has opted a
policy of managed free-market economy, which they justify as being consistent with
Islamic values as explicitly laid in each five-year development plan. Technically, this
model closely resembles the "indicative planning" approach employed by France and
elsewhere. The indicative planning approach is justified as offering information required to
guide investment and make other rational market choices. In the model, the top planning
commission(s) begins the planning process by setting preliminary overall targets, while
outlining the general course during the following five years that each plan is to last.
Two characteristics of the Kingdom's urban planning, in particular, and national
planning, in general, can be outlined. First, urban planning remains an activity wrought at
the central or national government level in isolation from local city government and general
public input. As such urban planning has been essentially technical, one that relies on