Urban growth boundary policy and residential suburbanization: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

The process of suburbanization of Riyadh, a city of 4.5 million inhabitants, offers a unique situation in which the urban morphology of the city can be examined in light of socio-political and economic conditions. Central government ordinances helped create ‘dysfunctional’ sprawl by mandating big lots and overly wide streets. Fifty percent of the city’s urban plan of approximately 1300 km2 represents a pattern of untimely, undeveloped subdivisions. Much of this premature sub-divisioning was a result of speculative land deals. The current area of undeveloped subdivided land is approximately 650 km2, which is roughly the equivalent to the city’s land currently developed. The author argues that government policies and inefficient urban planning practices have encouraged the transformation of the peripheral desert landscape into unchecked land sub-divisioning championed by land developers and speculators. Using a comparative approach, the paper attempts to highlight sociopolitical and other cultural factors that underlie this inefficient sprawl at the fringe. It closes with recommendations to alleviate such a costly pattern that can be generalized to other developing world cities.