Posted on 04/17/2015 5:42:52 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
The King Abdullah Economic City, or KAEC (pronounced ‘cake’), will be slightly larger than Washington DC and home to approximately two million residents.
Covering 70 square miles, the metropolis is costing £67 billion ($100 billion) and lies 100km from Jeddah, the commercial hub of the kingdom, near the Red Sea.
The late king had pinned his hopes for his country’s future on the new-build, although at the moment it resembles a dusty building site dotted with cranes and work is not likely to be completed for ten years, at least.
So far 15 per cent has been built, as public facilities and residential areas are still under construction. Plans include a port, industrial complex, a financial island, beach facilities and residential neighbourhoods.
KAEC is one of four new cities being built to diversify an economy that is overly dependent on oil. Already it has its own website showing plans, maps and including details on how to invest.
Fadi Al-Rasheed, the managing director of Emaar Economic City, the publicly traded Saudi company that runs the entire KAEC project.
‘We’re building with the 65 per cent of the population who are under 30 in mind,’ he explains.
‘And we have almost 200,000 Saudis studying abroad. Inevitably they are going to change things when they come back.’
Given that more women than men graduate from university, it is likely the Saudi landscape will shift over the coming years in more ways that one.
There are 90 km of roads in use in KAEC but, under present deeply held religious beliefs prohibiting it, no women in the country are able to drive on them.
The city’s future hinges on many things including the complex relationships between health, education, housing and employment requirements and infrastructure.
It will also open up transport links around the kingdom and internationally.
‘We aim to create one of the world’s largest ports,’ Rayan Bukhari, a young manager at the King Abdullah port told .
‘We’re not competing with Jeddah’s Islamic port – but we are going to take business away from Jebel Ali in Dubai. That’s because of our quicker, more automated offloading and customs procedure.’
‘Freight arriving at the port will be taken directly to the capital via the new land bridge,’ he says, ‘At the moment lots of products destined for Riyadh are shipped to Dubai, but that will change. They’ll be shipped here as it is cheaper – and can be delivered more quickly within the Kingdom.’
KAEC is also expected to become an important tourist stopover for pilgrims, aided by the fact Mecca and Medina are on the high speed train network that links KAEC with the two holy cities.
At the moment Mecca is one hour and twenty minutes drive away and Medina is three hours by car.
The Haramain train station will open at the end of this year and has been designed by British architect Norman Foster, also the man behind London’s ‘Gerkin’ skyscraper and New York’s Hearst Tower.
The station will provide acceleration to area’s developmental plan and will reduce the journey to Jeddah to 30 minutes.The megaproject on KAEC was announced in 2005.
The project is largely privately funded and the government has set up an Economic Cities Authority overseeing the four megacities able to deal swiftly with every licence, construction permit and approval needed.
Dubai doesn’t have oil itself, it decided to go the finance/ tourism route because it didn’t. You could, however, claim that Dubai used other people’s oil money, and that would be true. But it is interesting that Saudi Arabia is looking at itself becoming a non oil based economy.
Great! Then they can attack Iran all by themselves instead of trying to provoke Israel to do their dirty work for them.
Blintzes for everyone!
You remember Uncle Abdullah? He was the one afraid to cut the KAEC. No gay baker dessert, Shirley.
Well, let’s hope they complete it on time and under budget, and then the earth swallows it up.
If we make someone like Sarah Palin energy secretary, this place will look like Detroit in 10 years.
GO TED!
I bet they have less water shortage problems than Kalifornia....
I will take that bet and raise you a few ISIS inspired attacks on the water infrastructure piping in water from 100s of miles away...
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