Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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comprising the whole. In short, an isolated understanding of cultural sub-systems does not
yield a complete picture of the complex urban process.
Rather, as this study has shown, in a traditionally-based political economic system
and other forms of autocratic states, spatial restructuring of the national urban network and
internal organization of built forms is better understood by the role the state plays in the
urban process. The nature and character of the government vis a vis the society determines
just how representative the decision-making process is, both in the society, and, in
particular, in urban planning. While the built environment is the product of cumulative
decisions in space, it particularly reflects the interests of the powerful actors in the society,
viz the state in this case study. 1 In non-democratic, developing political systems, attempts
to fathom urban processes that overlook the peculiar role of the state in social development
are very likely to end up with an only partially effective, if not erroneous, conclusion.
Indeed planners and urban designers need to understand the socio-political environment of
the local or host societies and devise methods suited for them.
In this study, particular attention was given to the profound influence and direct input
of the Saudi government on the departure from traditional building processes and the
wholesale adoption of Westernized, modernized urban forms. I have also addressed urban
planning as one component of the government's whole process of transformation toward
modernizing the society. Due to its absolute de facto power and control of the oil resource,
the Saudi government has preempted the decision-making process at the national level,
including urban planning activity and urban policy making.
From the early introduction of municipal legislation to bring order to the growing
holy cities of Makkah and Madinah in the 1940s, to the adoption of the Urban Domain
approach in the late 1980s, urban planning in Saudi Arabia has teen the domain of the
central bureaucracy. There are rich sources of information on which planners and
researchers can build. The creation of the so-called "Arab" oil towns, despite
shortcomings, is among them. Also included are the widespread use of grid land
subdivisions in suburban development outside the traditional towns, the resort to master
plans in larger towns, and the adoption of "model" planned communities.
In analyzing the transformation of the Saudi urban system, I have attempted to place
the urban process in the larger picture of the nation's sociopolitical and economic