Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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governed by decision-making organs involving public agencies and private institutions
endowed with cash and land at their disposal. It assumed a population characterized by
amity, altruism, urbanity and community: a community of "believers" bound to follow
Doxiadis* design in full faith.
Despite its well meaning, the Doxiadis plan was little more than a Utopian exercise, an
ambitious attempt on behalf of Doxiadis Associates and the callow local planners to apply
theoretical idealism to a city undergoing rapid growth virtually ab initio. The failure of the
Doxiadis plan could not be attributed solely to the fact that the Doxiadis Associates paid
little attention to the sociopolitical and physical environment of the Saudi city, this is to say
the least. In fact, the Doxiadis plan was a professional exercise of technical planning in a
society that craved such expertise. The Doxiadis studies for Arar and other Saudi cities and
regions, were based on national regional trends and local surveys and analyses of problems
and needs, though their end results were often little more than window dressing.
Several flaws in Arar's Doxiadis experiment can be discerned. First, a lack of clear
vision concerning the post-design stage, that is the implementation phase. Doxiadis' final
report, although it identified the various necessary land uses (e.g. what was needed), did
not specify "operational" means by which the program could be put into effect (e.g. what to
give whom and how). For example, the Final Major Report (FMR) projected an increase
in the total number of residential units from 2,200 units in 1972 to 5,260 by 1993, for all
income groups. The FMR was so detailed that it listed projections of required land uses
down to, for example, the number of rooms needed per household and the area needed per
unit for a certain number of members per household for the years 1975,1980,1985, and
1993. The FMR also enumerated needed commercial, health, educational, mosques, etc.
down to the square meter. 35 In sum, the Doxiadis planners entrusted the callow Saudi
authorities and their nascent planning organs with the implementation of the copious
documents, already based on data of the 1960s made obsolete by the phenomenal
modernization programs of the 1970s.
Second, the very nature of the Saudi land tenure system stood as a major obstacle to
the realization of the Plan. The societal predilection for private ownership of property, the
government distribution of free land, lax practices of land privatization, and the absence of
taxes contributed substantially to the failure of the Doxiadis plan. 36 The economic
programs of the 1970s and 1980s brought higher income to the Saudi population, enabling