Lucien Zeigler | arabianomics.com commentary | 8/26/10
Given that the Economic Cities are such massive undertakings, it is no surprise that Andrew Hammond in Reuters wrote last week that the Economic Cities are “under pressure to deliver.” That’s because the four cities are massive reinvestments in the Kingdom’s own modernization and possibly the greatest single planned governmental effort at economic diversification in history.
The Economic Cities, which the Saudi Arabia General Investment Authority (SAGIA) describes as “an exciting metropolis, designed to maximize investment potential and deliver huge advantage to businesses located there,” carry a $60 billion price tag and should be completed by 2020.
But what is not known about the cities is what life will be like there. Building a city from scratch is a massive physical undertaking, but the social undertaking of creating a culture and identity for a completely new city will not be easy either. And in a conservative country like Saudi Arabia, where change happens slowly, the creation of a new city from scratch will force its new inhabitants to forge social norms that might not match the rest of the Kingdom’s.
And indeed life will be different in the cities – as well as in Saudi Arabia’s existing cities that may be losing many of its younger technocratic generation to the new “bubbles of freedom, as Hammond writes.
“Allowing women to drive cars and possibly permitting cinema houses, they may also add to the few bubbles of freedom in Saudi Arabia — where suffocating gender restrictions have been eased in recent years, to the ire of many religious conservatives.”
The investment by the Saudi government of $60 billion is a massive one, and SAGIA expects a handsome return on its investment both financially and in terms of the Kingdom’s overall economic standing in the world. But as Hammond writes, “adding to concerns is a sense that the future of the cities is tied up with the fate of social and political reforms. Many liberals fear the king’s successors will be less concerned with openness and relaxing clerical control.”
If these cities are intended to be cosmopolitan “bubbles” in the Kingdom where Saudis and foreigners are happy to live and work, then the success of these cities will last for generations only if there is a real, unique culture and society in these cities. As important as economic success is for a city, the society and culture of city is what makes people happy to live there. This should be considered by planners and future leaders of Saudi Arabia’s Economic Cities.
