Desert city under development - 2 days in Riyadh
The car inched slowly for a few metres and then stopped. As I stared at the dark red line on Google Maps, one almost-empty AC bus zipped past on the dedicated Bus Lane. A short distance away, I saw an empty metro train doing a pilot trial run expected to commence in few months time. We were near the new & upcoming King Abdullah Financial District (cluster of tall glass buildings, reminding one of Canary Wharf London or DIFC Dubai).
Another similar office-building cluster called Digital City has recently sprung up on the other corner of the city. After our meetings were done for the day, our driver suggested going to Boulevard City, a tourist attraction with music, food, theatre, etc etc and Time Square (NY inspired)
We passed through another major project under works - the massive King Salman Park, which once completed would be 5 times Central Park New York or 7 times London Hyde Park !
The Vision 2030 envisioned by Saudi Government in the year 2013 could be experienced right in front of one's eyes. Huge amount of money being pumped in to create this huge urban oasis to compete with likes of Dubai or Abu Dhabi. None of the projects mentioned in my para are fully ready, but one could see efforts being made in the right direction and monitored towards closure.
In my 2 days of work meetings, I managed to get some interesting perspective from senior business officials to the working class immigrants on the city's future. While the general sentiment seem to be bullish, the critics do point out to the life struggles of the blue-collared immigrants involved in construction of the city and some were sceptical about whether the public transport would actually help in reducing the traffic congestion ("It's hard to imagine Arabs waiting in queue for the train/ bus", they said!!).
Anyways, the city infrastructure looks on track to be ready to welcome more business and the resultant immigrants. On the social front too, it’s good to see women workforce being employed widely across sectors. At the immigration counter, 10/12 odd counters were women officials. So was the case in corporate offices, with few organisations celebrating diversity in their workforce. The cultural landscape is changing with the opening of cinemas, theatres, entertainment centres etc and recent performances by artists like Rihanna, Backstreet Boys, BlackPink etc which would have been unimaginable probably a decade back. As the nation looks to reduce its dependence from oil, these steps would be welcome change.
For someone born and brought up in Mumbai - a city perinnially under construction, it was a different feel to see a city coming up almost from scratch. The primary cause of Mumbai woes may possibly be because of private spending being much faster than public infra spending. An announcement for upcoming metro rail or new road or bus stop would immediately see residential building springing up while the actual train/bus may take years later. Riyadh may benefit in this area as most development happening is in the public infra space and the expectation/ hope would be there would be enough local/ immigrant population to use these public infra once they start operations.
It was certainly a good 2-3 days experience for my first visit to this city.
Cheers
Sunil
p.s : The traffic situation is bad in Riyadh at the moment with lots of poorly-maintained cars on the road, less traffic discipline !! That experience plus the South Indian food chain 'Saravana Bhavan' plus interacting with few Indian immigrants made sure I don't miss India in this country!