Rethinking Kuwait planning

RELATED ARTICLES: Joint UAE-Azerbaijan oil terminal to open in 2011 | P&T to design mental-health centre in Sharjah | Call for more buildings to 'talk' to each other

Gulf cities need to change to become more attractive to long-term residents, says an urban planner working on a multi-million dollar redesign of Kuwait’s Salmiya City District.

Francis Glare, head of urbanism at architecture firm BDP, said that high quality transport links, urban design,housing, schools and hospitals were crucial for diversifying the make-up of Gulf cities.

“I think that is the real challenge working in this part of the world,” he told Middle East Architect at last month’s Cityscape Abu Dhabi.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

“30 or 40 years on, these cities are at the point where they need to be re-thought. The agendas and economic drivers have changed and for these cities to diversify their economies they have to be attractive to live in long term, not just a couple of years.”

The firm recently won the contract to develop a planning and development guideline for the 20km2 Salmiya district on the Gulf coast, where growing congestion, pressures for redevelopment and a recognition of the existing poor quality of place, have led the Kuwait Municipality to act.

Glare added that Salmiya is an example of a city that is failing to keep up with the pace of development. He said the population of the district has swelled but the development and infrastructure has been left behind.

Kuwait’s youthful population is also creating challenges. “50% of the Kuwait population is under 20 years old and 95% work in the public sector. The country needs new economic drivers and new types of employment,” he said.

One way to address this, Glare said, was to create clusters of retail, residential and commercial outlets around transport links – something that is more easily achieved at the earliest master planning level.

“Salmiya is not a clean sheet - it’s an area of piecemeal development. There are still some low level houses near new towers and redeveloped blocks. There’s a simple zoning system but it’s quite chaotic,” he said.

He added that this has also aided developers and brought capital into the area as investors can look at the big picture before planning their projects and ensure that developments are suited to their surroundings.