Saudi Vision 2030: a New Mind-set of City future Moving from Strategic Planning to Sustainable Development based vision

The Case of AR Riyadh, KSA

Abstract

City urban visions is an increasing concern all over the world and exceptionally for Saudi cities. Saudi Arabia leaders have just launched Saudi vision 2030 which is bold vision for an ambition country in 2016. Whereas, planners in major cities tend to diversify their economies, improving quality of life, and repositioning their cities in the global context. Notably Riyadh city, the capital of KSA expected to be not only a great city for its citizens, but also a city that symbolizes Saudi urban aspirations. The research aims at investigating Riyadh urban visions history since the city urban development accumulates different approaches according to nature of visioning process. It is changed from urban development decisions made on case by case principle, where no vision, to decisions derived from a vision based on strategic planning process of MEDSTAR 2003 (The Metropolitan Development Strategy for AR Riyadh Region) to more integrated vision based on sustainable development process of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.

The research central argument is that urban planning paradigms affect intensely approaches that cities experience when formulating their urban visions. Using an analytical framework, the paper analyses Saudi Vision 2030 and MEDSTAR vision 2003. The aim is not to compare but to investigate Riyadh visions history that diversifies from strategic planning based vision to sustainable development tending to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The framework includes qualitative variables focusing on the process of city vision formulating as the nature of process, time horizon, and scope of visioning, etc. The research concludes that the nature of the visioning process plays a great role in the vision formulating process. Especially when it comes to Riyadh City case since adopting sustainable development process of Saudi Vision 2030 helps integrating multiple comprehensive development aspects and forms new mindset of the city future.