Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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notion, that is, the realization of land for its exchange value rather than its use value,
characteristic of traditional built environments. Now, land became the means for capital
accumulation, but without levying taxes (e.g. zakat), the prospect of socializing such a
social resource was eliminated. Had such a tax been imposed, it could have been utilized
by the public municipality to defray the social cost associated with development.
The implication on the city spatial structure was logical, denizens sought the
periphery for cheap land, and for public services guaranteed by the government. The
resulting urban form was rational, a repeated pattern of land subdivision marked by lack of
uniformity and leap-frog urban sprawl. In 1986 undeveloped land accounted for 64
percent of the city's metropolitan area. This sprawl has been tempered by the well-devised,
hierarchical road network forming the framework binding the city's scattered parts.
However, the failure to implement the Doxiadis plan's super-block system of orthogonal
residential districts, each including its own subcenters (these subcenters originally were
meant for residents' shopping areas, schools and recreation), precluded the possibility of
creating balanced spatial structure for the city as a whole, comprising a dominant central
CBD complemented by these subcenters.
This form of sporadic development in the 1940s following the inception of the
Kingdom in the 1930s, was exacerbated in the 1950s, and took momentum in the
construction boom decade of the 1970s. The outcome is that vast areas of the city are
vacant (currently, 54 percent of the subdivided area is undeveloped). This was
encountered in 1986 when the Council of Ministers adopted what they called the Urban
Domain (No.13, 9/1/1406 H. (1986)) to put growth under check. The U.D. was adopted
in response to incessant building activity at the periphery, which was guaranteed free statepaid
public services and infrastructure. The new UD was applied to 199 major Saudi cities
and towns, in a serious attempt to counter future sprawl.
G. The Emergence of New Architecture and Building Methods
Traditionally, Najdi towns were constructed from load-bearing mud bricks while
roofs were built of wood beams, over which was placed branches, bushes and mud in
three layers. This ancient building technique limited a room's size to a few yards and
buildings heights to a maximum of three stories. Building materials were largely obtained
from the surrounding environment and assembled according to traditional methods. The