“It looks like a war zone,” says a Saudi writer about Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second and most charming city. Old Saudi houses, mosques and handsome villas are gone
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskLike Prince Muhammad himself, many of Jeddah’s 4.7m people initially welcomed the bulldozers. They flattened the slums reputedly home to criminal gangs, drug mafias and prostitution rings, as well as the poor quarters housing foreigners doing menial work. Bereft of proper drainage, the city is prone to flooding and needed a facelift.
No one dares protest. It is brave merely to mutter. Some grumble that the House of Saud, the dynasty of Bedouin originally from the parched hinterland, like to punish the port’s cosmopolitans for never truly embracing Saudi rule. Before the founding king, Abdel Aziz bin Saud, conquered the whole country only a century ago, Jeddah was the grand seaside capital of the rival kingdom of Hijaz, while Riyadh, homestead of the Al Saud, was a mud hamlet.
Over past decades, embassies and most recently businesses have had to relocate to Riyadh. King Salman, Riyadh’s governor for five decades before taking the throne in 2015, turned the new capital into a metropolis of 7m people, almost twice Jeddah’s size. As crown prince, Muhammad has continued his father’s work. To drive his point home, he arrested and fleeced some of Jeddah’s top businessmen.
Officials say a better city will rise up. They liken Prince Muhammad to Emperor Napoleon III, who replaced Paris’s slums with leafy boulevards and parks in the 1850s and 1860s. One speaks of turning southern Jeddah into a gateway to the nearby holy city of Mecca. Jeddah recently hosted a film festival, a Korean pop show and a grand prix, a foretaste of excitements to come. It will be a second Venice, says another, replete with lagoons and canals.
Locals have heard it before. A project costing $45bn to overhaul Jeddah was unveiled 13 years ago, but never materialised. This time befuddled residents have seen plans only for the waterfront and for converting an obsolete desalination plant into an opera house. For homeless Saudis, the prince’s masterplan, Vision 2030, augurs destruction more than reconstruction.
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