Creating Great Places in Riyadh

All too often, local governments overly depend on “big projects” such as a convention center to be a catalyst for revitalization, only to see them fall short. Even if a long-term vision is created the plans often sit on a shelf because there are limited short-term results, and there is no time to implement longer term strategies before the next government has a new idea or vision.

Both government and public sector entities have struggled to create great cities and neighborhoods. Traditional thinking defines a great city by quantifiable statistics as population count, number of businesses and jobs, median household income, unemployment rates, etc. However, over the past few decades, leaders have learned that the non-quantifiable aspects of a city are just as important toward reaching the title of an “amazing” city and in many cases these aspects lead to major transformation. The idea of “Place” is a leading example of a non-quantifiable element of great cities. Recent research demonstrates that quality of “place” creates quantifiable benefits because “places” creates spin-off economic growth, and human activity and interaction.

Central Riyadh is embarking on a major transformational journey. Leadership has the unique opportunity to establish a long-term vision that transforms the physical, economic and cultural dynamics of the city. With the input from various stakeholders and the community, this vision can redefine Riyadh going forward.

In February 2019, I traveled with the Placemaking Fund to pilot this methodology on how public spaces in Central Riyadh, particularly the heart of the Historic City, can become catalytic social places and destinations that contribute to an overall economic revitalization of neighborhoods, districts and the city as a whole. Since then, I’ve been leading the development of the final proposal for the selected sites.

On February 2019, The Placemaking Fund team, together with the Center for Local Governance, initiated a placemaking process for two public spaces in Central Riyadh: Al Futah Park and Umm Suleim. These spaces were selected as initial pilots to demonstrate the effectiveness of the placemaking techniques so that this approach could be applied more widely in the future.