King Abdullah Economic City: Engineering Saudi Arabia’s post-oil future Sarah Moser a,⇑ , Marian Swain b , Mohammed H. Alkhabbaz c,1 a Department of Geography, McGill University, Burnside Hall, Room 705, 805 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, QC H3A 2K6, Canada b Independent scholar c College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, S.R. Crown Hall, 3360 South State Street, Chicago, IL 60616-3793, United States article info Article history: Received 3 September 2014 Received in revised form 5 January 2015 Accepted 1 March 2015 Keywords: Saudi Arabia New cities Master planned city Economic diversification Post-oil economy Entrepreneurial urbanism abstract King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) is a $100 billion master-planned city under construction along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. As part of a quartet of new planned ‘economic’ cities in the desert kingdom, the city’s goal is to provide 1 million jobs for the kingdom’s rapidly growing, youthful population and to diversify the Saudi economy away from the oil industry. The city is illustrative of a recent trend of mega-projects on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf designed for a post-oil era and fits into broader glo- bal trends of economic development strategies. Designed to accommodate 2 million people, KAEC aims to be a global logistics and manufacturing hub that will feature an education zone, ‘industrial valley’, busi- ness district, resort area, sea port, and residential areas for various income brackets. Conceptualized as a modern, international, and socially progressive city, KAEC represents a departure from current Saudi social values and governance and a shift in the ruling elite’s priorities. In this paper we examine how the Saudi state seeks to re-invent itself through the construction of new cities and the recent pivot towards economic liberalism. We position the national and international ambitions manifested in KAEC within broader transnational trends in entrepreneurial urbanism and new master-planned cities. Though KAEC is still in the early construction phase, this paper offers a preliminary analysis of the master plan and potential challenges relating to governance. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction In the oil-rich states of the Arabian Peninsula and in much of the Muslim world, there is a burgeoning trend of building lavish planned cities from a tabula rasa (Moser, 2012). Flush with petrodollars, many Arab States can afford investment projects on a massive scale and have government structures that enable urban mega-developments. Building new planned cities is a strategy used by states to stimulate economic development (Keeton, 2011) as well as instill a sense of loyalty and pride in the population, communicate ideology and project a modern image to the rest of the world (Vale, 2008). In the case of Saudi Arabia, building new cities has also long been seen by the ruling elite to be a key to its survival. During the formation of the political system after World War II, the king felt that building lasting political structures based on nomadism and shifting allegiances posed an insurmountable challenge (Al-Ankary & El-Bushra, 1989). This is reflected in the rapid rate of urbanization in post-war Saudi Arabia; in 1950, 10 percent of the population lived in cities, while by 1985, city dwell- ers rose to 75 percent (Al-Ankary & El-Bushra, 1989). Meanwhile, oil and gas consumption in Saudi Arabia continues to skyrocket and recent studies estimate that Saudi Arabia could be an oil- importer by as early as 2030 (Bloomberg, 4 September, 2012). Beyond stimulating economic growth and creating jobs, new cities in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, 2 may also be a strategy to stave off political and social dissent among a population eager for change (Al-Rasheed, 2010). Cities can be understood as the language through which coun- tries can communicate their wealth, power, and modernity to both a national and global audience. Yasser Elsheshtawy (2004) argues that cities are replacing nation-states as the centers for global eco- nomic interactions, and because of this increasingly powerful and autonomous role for cities, there is a widespread perception that cities are a product that needs to be marketed. City development is ‘branded’ for a global audience (Kavaratzis & Ashworth, 2005), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2015.03.001 0264-2751/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 514 266 9908. E-mail addresses: sarah.moser@mcgill.ca (S. Moser), marianswain@gmail.com (M. Swain), mkhabbaz@gmail.com (M.H. Alkhabbaz). 1 Tel.: +1 617 909 4669. 2 Barthel and Vignal’s (2014) paper explains how the number of Arab Mediter- ranean megaprojects decreased after the Arab Spring and projects now receive much closer political scrutiny. In contrast, KAEC and other urban mega-projects in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have continued apace. Cities 45 (2015) 71–80 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities