Khobar City Plan and the New Public Space in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The launch of Khobar city plan in 1947 as the first ever planned city in Saudi Arabia marked a radical change in public space making, which shifted from pre-industrial intimate and human-focused public realm to automobile-ridden open-ended public space. This study examines the impact of this radical shift by focusing on one particular street, King Khalid street, which was once the bustling urban core of the new city of Khobar. Data were collected from multiple sources given the inconsistency in the documentation of the planning and development process of the city. This included relevant popular as well as specialist literature, archival maps, historical photographs, and interviews with local residents who grew up or lived in the city for most of their lives. In addition, brief fieldwork was conducted to assess and examine the current street conditions. In comparison to the desolate current condition of King Khalid street, this study reveals multiple factors which helped to galvanize the exceptional position of this street in the past as a primary public space within a seemingly consistent gridiron city. These factors include accessibility, scale, architectural characteristics, economic offerings, and the general urban experience. The study concludes by discussing ways to resurrect the street based on parallel experiments from the region.