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

Abstract

City urban visions are an increasing concern all over the world and exceptionally for Saudi cities. Saudi Arabia leaders have just launched the Saudi Vision 2030, which is a bold vision for an ambitious country in 2016. At the same time, 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's urban vision history since the urban city development accumulates different approaches according to the nature of the visioning process. It has changed from urban development decisions made on a case-by-case principle, with no vision, to decisions derived from a vision based on the strategic planning process of MEDSTAR 2003 (The Metropolitan Development Strategy for Ar-Riyadh Region) to more integrated vision based on the sustainable development process of Saudi Vision 2030. The main research argument is that urban planning paradigms affect intense 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's vision 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 the 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's case since adopting the sustainable development process of Saudi Vision 2030 helps integrating multiple comprehensive development aspects such as (urban, economic, social, etc.) and forms a new mindset of the city's future.