Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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on the urban scene. His reforms were structural, aimed at long-term socioeconomic goals
to stabilize the agitated masses. They were political to circumvent the anti-establishment
political tides that swept the Middle East compounded by the indulgence of royal elites. He
swiftly embarked upon prudent steps to play down the widening gap between the elites and
the majority. Upon accession in 1964, Faisal ordered Annasiriyah's wall to be
demolished, an element he viewed as a physical embodiment of royal indulgence and of the
bifurcated society.
During the 1960s, the growing demand for housing had already brought about
change from small-scale, sporadic uncontrolled individual street development to the layout
of extensive tracts of land based inevitably on the gridiron. Aside from the government
employees' suburb of al Malaz and the royal suburb of Nasiriyah, both built during King
Saud's reign, Riyadh's suburbanization did not take the form of a "coherent whole."
Subsequent growth lacked predetermined attention to open space, public services and
community facilities. As need arose for a school, a health clinic or a police station, the
government had to either buy or rent residential buildings and convert them according to the
new need or rent them. It was not until the 1970s, when improved government revenues
allowed for the provision of open space and recreational facilities.
The modernization of Riyadh abided in the following decades paralleling the
expansion of the government bureaucracy. The number of government employees grew
from 36,800 in 1968 to 84,500 in 1977, to 185,600 in 1986. By 1988, the government
sector comprised 205,000 out of the City's total employed man power of 518,200,
including non-Saudis. Riyadh's share of national government workers rose from 40 per
cent in 1977 to 45 per cent in 1986. Moreover, average annual income of government
employed personnel was SR 63,400 ($16,900), 22 per cent higher than the average in the
private sector. 38 It is this growth in government bureaucracy and privileges which
constitutes the backbone of Riyadh's urban economy. The spatial order of the city has
grown containing a projection of this preponderance of government power and leadership
values. The 1950s' motto of 'New Riyadh' became the 'City of Future' in the affluent
decades of the 1970s and 1980s.