Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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In Western parliamentary or elected democracies, for example, the very
notion of planning presupposes the existence of a political market; interest
group representation; a culture of 'rationality;' and a bureaucracy committed
to Weberian reason, or a rational application of means to received ends.
These conditions are taken as the essential environment in which the
implementation of all policies, including planning policies, must be
realised. 18
In the following three chapters, I explore the urban transformation of three Saudi
urban settlements that vary in population size, urban economies and genesis. While
imported technology (e.g. transportation, electricity, etc.) was changing the face, pace and
space of the contemporary Saudi built forms, the government has been the larger force
and catalyst of this urban transformation. It manifests itself in the underwriting of nationwide
modernization, thereby triggering urbanization. I will discuss in detail the impact of
oil industrialization and government modernization programs on the creation of Arar ab
initio, and the transformation of the local agrarian economies of Riyadh and Huraimla's
into a modern planned settlements.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, the implementation of Western urban planning has
proved inattentive to the country's physical context and incongruent with the prevalent
political environment. 19 As shown in this study, the Saudi major cultural attributes (i.e. a
traditional monarchy ruling an Islamically-inspired society, largely relying on oil
revenues) must be contrasted to those prevalent in Western capitalist democracies. This
study aims at increasing knowledge of non-Western societies and addresses the complex
role played by the state. I stress caution against "packaged" universal approaches to
urban planning and development. As previously mentioned, the emerging urban planing
paradigm in the Kingdom, while retaining aspects of Western planning such as
infrastructure and transportation planning, has been duly centralized, emphatically
apolitical and highly technical. At the same time, the centralized character of the state
emasculated local control and initiative in the various communities of the country, thanks
to the preponderance of the central state's fiscal strength, based largely on oil revenues.
The underwriting of local urban economies by the central government eclipsed traditional
subsistence economies of cities, towns and settlements.
Since the Saudi government does not collect taxes, investment in long-range, largescale
infrastructure and industrial projects and social services (housing, education, health,
culture, etc.) are deemed a sort of noblesse oblige. 20 Bestowed with oil affluence and