Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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residential suburbs, megalomaniac government projects, commercial malls, glass and
marble-wrapped high-rise buildings, and freeways- bestowed an image of progress.
II. TRADITIONAL MEDINA VS. THE PRAGMATIC METROPOLIS
The following section comprises a discussion and an evaluation of the contemporary
built forms in light of the six traditional cultural attributes that were discussed in Chapter V.
Modernization programs, coupled with increasing technology, and the expansion of
bureaucratic control have caused the demise of traditional cultural attributes which forged
traditional built forms, that is the medina (Chapter V). The consolidation of the various
regions' "town-states" which constitute today's Saudi Arabia has focused the dispersed
populations' energies into one geopolitical unit, that is the nation-state. Nationalism, as
with technology itself, has come to substitute, in part, the traditional cultural values and
functions, operating in effect as a secular force (e.g. rational decision making and technical
urban planning) and as a key integrative mechanism in modern Saudi society. The state has
supplanted religion as the major force in shaping urban forms.
New modes of political control, urban design and planning, land tenure and
distribution policies, home ownership, and infrastructure provisions have emerged under
the auspices of the central state. In table 9.1,1 present a matrix outlining the major cultural
attributes in both traditional built environments, and the ones in the modern era.
A. Government and Political Control
The traditional amir around whom the political, economic and social affairs turned has
been replaced with a new political center: a powerful king aided with a complex
bureaucracy, oil revenues and a modern security apparatus. As power increasingly shifted
to the center, the state's economic aid to local settlements has eclipsed concerns over local
control, and the traditional amirs' powers which were based on subsistence economy have
eroded. At the local level, the town's amir (who traditionally represented his people) was
substituted with the bureaucratic amir, a viceroy who represents the king at the local level. 2
While in the past, the amir exercised substantial powers using discretion, consultation
with notables who represented major clans, and, if needed, coercion to maintain the
cohesion of his realm, the modern amir, with the help of the heads of the various local