Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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built environment, all consistent with the political system's traditional character and
contributing to the sustenance of the socio-political and economic status quo.
SUMMARY
From an industrial complex on the Tapline oil corridor, Arar emerged as a regional
urban center serving political, economic and military functions as well housing a population
of 65,500 inhabitants. The birth of Arar in 1950 represents the restructuring of the modern
national urban network according to the emerging oil economy and under the auspices of
the nation-state. The shift from traditional-subsistence town economies- manifest in -
maritime and caravan trade centers, oasis settlements and hamlets- to a modern ones chiefly
dependent on oil production and central government's backing signaled an irrevocable
process of urbanization. As the significance of the Tapline project to the national economy
diminished in the mid 1970s, the political importance of the town emerged as the major
force behind Arar's accelerated urban growth. Originally built for pure economic reasons,
that is, to meet the logistics of oil transportation, Arar's subsequent growth reflected the
national government's political goals, viz as a military outpost and an administrative service
center for one of the Kingdom's barren regions.
The nation-state in its efforts to cultivate massive oil resources has effectively
participated in the urbanization of the desolate northern region through the redistribution of
oil income to all regions, including the Northern Province, by creating jobs and investment
in the build environment. Arar was endowed with government departments which brought
the previously industrial camp into a status capable of serving the needs of the region's
population as well as to fulfill national security goals and symbolize the monarchy's
suzerainty.
Arar's planned growth intermittently witnessed the proliferation of haphazard growth
in the form of shantytowns. Arar's development typified modern urban planning practices
in Saudi Arabia manifest in the major phases of platting grid-iron land subdivisions, the
less-than successful experiment with a master plan, and the latest, seemingly pragmatic
Urban Domain approach. All Arar's growth phases, save the original oil complex built by
the Tapline, conformed to the national codes of urban design and legislation. The
uncoordinated implementation of numerous urban growth-related decrees by the central