Dissertation_Dr Faisal Almubarak

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was espoused to create outlets for the steadily increasing oil affluence, to stave off external
threat and to convey legitimacy in the face of rising expectations of the growing urban
middle class. 12
National development has become the vehicle to attain national integrity, economic
prosperity and the means to attain better standards of living of the population, a common
goal for modern economies. However, theoretically, the pursuit of development has been
accompanied with numerous problems, which, if not well understood, may result in
negative social social, economic and political outcomes. Samuel Huntington stated
The principal threat to the stability of traditional society comes not from
foreign invasions by foreign armies, but from invasion by foreign ideas...The
monarch is forced to modernize and to attempt to change his society by the
fear that if he does not, someone else will. Nineteenth-century monarchs
modernized to thwart imperialism, twentieth-century monarchs modernize to
thwart revolution. 13
As the discussion unfolds, the relationship between the political economic
characteristics of the nation-state and urban change will be elucidated. Urbanization, urban
development and urban policy will be discussed in light of the dramatic changes in the
national economy while adhering to an essentially "rigid" political framework of the
traditional monarch manifest in a centralized decision-making process and an absence of
formal citizens' participation.
B. Early Urbanization: The Hijar Settlements and Bedouin
Sedentarization
Saudi Arabia was the traditional home of Middle Eastern nomadism which was
estimated to form 50 per cent of the country's population in the 1930s. 14 The nomads
pastoral, mobile life involves migratory animal husbandry, while taking advantage of
seasonal and geographical variations. This can only be explained in terms of the harsh
physical environment of the Arabian peninsula. Before the 1980's agricultural programs,
only 0.13 per cent of the Country's total area of 2.2 million square kilometers was
cultivated; 80 per cent of the country was desolate desert used for grazing. Starting with
the capture of Riyadh in 1902, Al-Saud adroitly proceeded to consolidate the Country's
regions despite their poor potential for unification. 15 With magnanimity, religious fervor
and political flair, the King managed to win the fealty of the regions' settlements and the
fickle and powerful nomadic bedouin tribes, with largesse, force, or conjugal relationships.