Transforming cities into attractive places of living

Mobility, shared living and working places, and preserving diversity are all keywords that define a city’s attractiveness, speakers said at the second session of the Jeddah Economic Forum (JEF).
The session focused on cities as appealing environments for people to reside.
David Smith, the moderator of the session and CEO of the Affordable Housing Institute in Boston, spoke with various experts from Turkey, Singapore and Brazil on how to make cities attractive and livable spaces.
The speakers also agreed that in order for governments to initiate successful urbanization plans, clear visions and strategic decisions need to be delineated from the onset.
According to Lee Yi Shyan, senior minister of state, minister of trade and industry and minister of nation development in Singapore, a good living environment, a good economy and enough recreational spaces are all essential to make a city attractive. He cited the example of Singapore, which boasts one of the highest standards of living in the world despite the city’s high density, as over 5 million people live in an area of 710 sq km.
Jaime Lerner, former governor of the state of Paraná in Brazil and mayor of Paraná’s capital city Curitiba, said the structure of a city should be like a turtle, in which people live, work and move together.
“If we cut the shell of a turtle, the turtle is going to die,” he remarked, adding that the same happens in cities in which people are separated by factors like age or economic wealth.
Saudi Arabia has a completely different culture than Brazil, Lerner acknowledged after the session. However, the definition of what constitutes a good quality of life is universally similar, as people strive to ensure a safe environment for their families as well as a competitive and diversified economy to work in.
He added that Saudi Arabia should develop a clear strategic vision and demarcate its priorities, as the country is changing rapidly and cities are the last refuge of solidarity for citizens.
In a brief one-on-one with the moderator, Smith said the challenges facing Saudi Arabia, like several countries in the Gulf region, is that urbanization is hitting at an accelerated rate. Jeddah especially, he added, needs urban regeneration immediately.
“The Kingdom has the financial resources to create a substantial number of housing units. The challenge is that the government delivery agencies are not configured for the 21st century, and there needs to be a reorientation of agencies to focus on public-private partnerships, complementing the private sector efforts, rationalizing and managing the use of land, and managing the creation of mixed use communities that combine working and living spaces.”
The trick in Jeddah, Smith said, is to preserve the historic architecture and streetscape, but at the same time substantially improve the physical infrastructure.
This requires three things: an urban renewal authority that has integrated powers at the ministerial level to manage land rationalization and infrastructure delivery; a law on historic preservation that legally designates certain structures as historic and preserves their exterior; and capital incentives in historic regeneration zones.
Nordin Bin Mohamed Yatim, commercial consul of Singapore in Jeddah, said although Saudi Arabia does not resemble the small city-state of Singapore, what the Kingdom can learn from it is to make a city livable by developing cities that are self-sufficient, with each neighborhood having its own schools, shops and businesses.
Yasser Ali Aldawood, economist at the economics department of NCB, said: “Urbanization is inevitable — it will happen sooner or later — but there are catastrophic consequences when urbanization occurs unplanned.” Looking at the Singapore model and how it was developed over a short period of time to what it is today can “inspire the Kingdom and give us hope.”