Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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Riyadh's population increased from 82,000 inhabitants to 300,000 by 1968, out of
which seventy percent were migrants. As oil revenues multiplied, society's living
standards improved. Increase in car ownership during the 1960s was phenomenal,
fluctuating between 24 percent and 40 percent in the period 1962-67; the number of
vehicles jumped from 3 per 1,000 inhabitants to 8.8, despite the very high increase in the
city's population. 34 The number of registered vehicles continued to increase dramatically
in the following decades. It increased by twenty fold between 1971 and 1987, from about
168,000 cars to 4.5 million nationwide. To seize this growth, the national road network
was expanded vastly from 5,000 kilometers in the mid 1970s to 90,000 in 1987, 35
Unfortunately, however, the increase in car ownership led planners to perform major
demolition in the historical city. H. St. J. B. Philby, who first came to Arabia in
November 1917, and spent the rest of his life in the country, correctiy augured the city's
future growth. During the late 1950s, Philby gave a good sense of this process of change
at its inception:
...watching and recording, step by step, the process of change, at first
gradual and tentative, but later with ever increasing and almost reckless
tempo, by which the transformation scene which greets the visitor of today
has been achieved. It still is very far from complete and there is no knowing
how far it will go; but building, and ever more building, is the order of the
day: to say nothing of the accompanying demolition of old-style houses (of
clay) to make room for the concrete and stucco monuments of exotic Western
architecture. 36
The 1950s and 1960s were also decades of political turmoil and economic crises.
Since the founding of the Kingdom in 1932, the King and the royalty were the major
recipients of oil revenues, thus spearheading the trend of change. Mansfield stated, "The
effect on some of the royal princes, of whom there were now more than 2,000, was
devastating. They wanted to acquire all the products of Western consumer society as soon
as they saw them, and there were plenty of unscrupulous salesmen ready to provide them at
inflated prices." 37 By the mid 1950s, the royalty's prerogative right to oil wealth resulted
in widespread resentment by the population, increasingly exposed to outside ideas and
political values. Feeling the soaring popular resentment, the monarchic state felt the need
for reforms. Unable to steer the nation, King Saud was forced to step aside as senior royal
family members agreed it was time to shift gears.
His successor, King Faisal's contribution had more indirect than direct repercussions