Just to be clear, Paris and Jeddah aren’t even remotely similar. The former is often lauded as the world’s most romantic city and the latter is a hot, desert city on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Well I guess you could say that they are both historic cities, and that they both attract a large number of tourists each year, albeit for different reasons. Changes happening in Jeddah today also offer some interesting parallels between these very different locations. Parallels I didn’t know existed until I began writing this article on a megaproject that is currently underway in the Saudi Arabian city.
Last year saw the commencement of a multibillion-dollar development in Jeddah, where more than 30 neighborhoods were bulldozed to the ground to make way for a more modern city.
Jeddah is gateway to Makkah, the birthplace of Islam and the direction to which approximately 1.9 billion Muslims turn their faces in prayer. It is said to have been used as a resting place for fisherman and was eventually settled by the Qadaa’a tribe over 2500 years ago. It was this tribe who supposedly named the city after one of their sons. It is also said the city was named after the wife of the Prophet Adam and Mother of Mankind. ‘Jeddah’ means grandmother in the Arabic language, and Eve, or Hawaa as she is referred to by Muslims, was buried in the city, hence the name (Sabaa’ee, 1999).
Muslims know this city well. It is the last leg of their journey to Makkah, where they descend their planes or ships, and head to the holy city for the sake of their lord. Many non-Muslims would know the city too. In his second Sherlock Holmes novel, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made reference to Jeddah or Jiddah as he spelt it. Johnathon Small, the stories villain, recounts his journey from India to London where he had hoped to take revenge against Major Sholto; and on his long and tiresome journey he sailed through Jeddah with a cargo of Malay pilgrims who Mr Small describes as having one very good quality: “they let you alone and asked no questions”.
After performing pilgrimage, Muslims usually go on to visit the holy city of Madinah and some visit Jeddah too. The Saudis are hoping to maximize their earning potential from these visitors as well as attracting others. This is part of a wider plan (Vision 2030) where the Saudis hope to move away from oil dependence and diversify their economy. As part of this vision, many places in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are seeing a boost in infrastructure development. Riyadh, the capital, is getting a new metro system, the holy mosques of Makkah and Madinah are being expanded, and Jeddah is getting its fair share of redevelopment too.
The Jeddah municipality has long been working on a master plan for the city and this plan, they say, will “transform this coastal jewel into one of the world’s most livable cities by the end of the decade”. As part of the plan, 64 out of the city’s 211 neighborhoods have been earmarked for redevelopment and half of these 64 neighborhoods have already been bulldozed. Once completed, green spaces will cover more than a third of the total project area and there will even be space for an opera house, an oceanarium and a sports stadium. This all sounds very promising, unlike the city’s track record on these so called master plans which have struggled to deliver on their promises in the past.
The first masterplan for Jeddah was proposed in 1963 but the city “unexpectedly” expanded eastwards, resulting in the creation of slum development. A second masterplan was drafted up between 1963 and 1978 but this plan was proposed without any building ordinances and planning policies, again resulting in more slum development. And the 2004 masterplan was abandoned altogether due to, well, poor planning (Mortada, 2017). These failures aren’t Jeddah specific either. In 1968 the then Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz (now King Salman), Governor of Riyadh handpicked Constantinos Doxiadis, a Greek architect and urban planner who was at the peak of his powers and gave him the assignment of creating a masterplan for Riyadh, which was rapidly expanding at the time. The city was designed according to the superblock concept, and the plan even included a green belt around the city to limit growth. But it didn’t take the city very long to grow beyond this greenbelt and by 1979 new plans were being drawn up for Riyadh.
One way this masterplan differs from previous ones, is in its heavy emphasis on slum clearance. The number of homes planned for demolition in Jeddah haven’t been published as far as I can tell; but it is plain to see that it will be a lot of homes if only based on an eye test, and this eye test is supported by the fact that the municipality is hoping to make room for 18.5 million square meters of land. These slums have long been a thorn in the side of local authorities who have struggled to cope with the criminality associated with them and so naturally, the city hopes to get rid of them once and for all.
Slum clearance isn’t anything new, it has taken place, and still takes place all over the world as a way to remedy unhealthy living conditions in towns and cities. A mass slum clearance campaign took place in the USA, after World War Two; and in the United Kingdom, approximately 1.5 million homes were demolished through slum clearance between the years 1955 and 1985, to make way for better housing. But the slum clearance taking place in Jeddah today better resembles the modernization of Paris that took place in the 19th Century.
19th Century Paris was very different from the Paris we know today and Victor Consideran, who was a prominent French economist at the time, didn’t pull any punches when he said that: “Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.”
Between the years 1853 and 1870, Paris underwent a renovation project, commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III and planned by one Georges-Eugène Haussmann. He is often referred to as the man who built Paris, transforming it from a city riddled with sickness and slum housing to one with broad avenues, beautiful parks, and an effective sewer system. And while Haussmann is often praised, he is also heavily criticized too. A 2016 article written in the Guardian called him the “the Parisian who ripped up his home city”.
Among the criticisms of his work is that some of the slums he destroyed weren’t in fact slums but medieval treasures. He is also blamed for displacing thousands of working-class Parisians from the city’s downtown, after the demolition of their homes made it even harder for them to find alternative accommodation because of rising rents.
Many of the issues facing Jeddah today were faced by the people of Paris in the 1800’s. One such issue was traffic circulation. Carriages, carts and wagons struggled to move in the very narrow streets of central Paris which could be as narrow as just one or two meters. And it’s the same story in Jeddah where (before the demolitions) it was difficult for even small cars to enter the slum neighborhoods, let alone fire trucks and other emergency vehicles. These difficulties have made the slums the primary concern for the Department of Civil Defense in Jeddah, according to mayor of Jeddah, Saleh Al-Turki,
The solutions to the problems facing Jeddah today are also similar to the solutions proposed by Haussmann in the 19th century. The slums will be torn down, and a more beautiful city will emerge from where the old city once stood. But at whose expense? A BBC article published in March 2022 highlighted the concerns of many of the residents. According to the article some of the areas earmarked for redevelopment weren’t in fact slums, but places with long established communities that provide affordable housing for those who need it. These complaints are nearly identical to those made by people who lived through the Paris project of the 19th century. The demolition works in Jeddah has also caused a supply shock in the city’s housing market, just as it did in Paris, which has pushed up rental prices, forcing many people out of the city.
To be fair, slum clearance always occurs at the expense of someone, and the challenges that Jadawis (people who live in Jeddah) face, and those faced by their Parisian counter parts have been faced by others too. And yet, there a lot of similarities in Haussmann’s Plans for Paris all those years ago, and in Jeddah today. Both plans aimed to improve the city’s infrastructure and to promote economic growth through increased tourism. Both involved the demolition of existing structures and the rebuilding of the city on a grander scale. Both projects sought to provide modern amenities such as improved public transportation and sanitation. And both have managed to fit an opera house into their plans too!
I am personally very interested to see what the city will look like after the completion of this project. Will the city be improved or will it be more of the same? The Modernization of Paris was also controversial, both in it’s time and even today to some degree. But one thing is certain, the city changed. It changed from a medieval city of narrow streets to a one of the world’s most beautiful cities. Jeddah also must change. But the plans for the city shows that old habits still die hard for the city’s urban planners.
A report on the city conducted by UN-Habitat in 2019 analyses the New Jeddah Plan and points out something very interesting. The plan hopes to increase the city’s built up area to 164,100 hectares to hosting a population of what they estimate to be approximately seven and a half people by 2030. But this would decrease living densities and encourage sprawl. All Saudi Arabian cities are built at low density and this is often why they are so difficult to navigate and why they are also so dominated by the motorcar. The UN-Habitat advises against this urban expansion. Instead, the report suggests increasing densities within the current urban footprint through mixed land use, and the development the vacant land that exists inside the urban area.
For all of the money being spent on this project and all of the disruption it is causing it better be worth it. But to be worth it the city’s planners must be willing to confront the mistakes they have made in the past and learn from them. They need to take the housing needs of everyone into consideration, not just the rich, for example. And since the New Jeddah Project has managed to be so similar to Haussmann’s modernization of Paris so well to this point, it would also do well to try and emulate what the city has gotten right as well. Studies show that Paris is often ranked as one of the most walkable cities in the world, and one of the best connected too. Currently Jeddah isn’t well connected, nor is it very walkable but this can change and the first steps to this change have already been made with the municipality’s ambitious plan to make Jeddah “one of the world’s most livable cities by the end of the decade”. So lets see how this ambitious plan takes shape.
Sources:
Mortada, H. (2017). Analytical Conception of Slums of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. International Journal of Advances in Mechanical and Civil Engineering. Volume 4, pp. 6–18.
Sabaa’ee, A. (1999). تاريخ مكة: دراسات في السياسة والعلم والاجتماع والعمران [The History of Makkah: A study in it’s politics, knowledge, society and buildings]. Saudi Arabia.
Un-Habitat (2019). Jeddah City Profile. Future Saudi Cities Programme City Profiles Series: Jeddah. Riyadh