Saudi targets Jeddah city slums with huge project

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A massive redevelopment program targeting Jeddah’s slums was unveiled yesterday at Cityscape Jeddah.

The scheme – spearheaded by the government-backed Jeddah Development and Urban Regeneration Company (JDURC) – will see hundreds of thousands of residents of the city’s so-called ‘unplanned settlements’ relocated while buildings are torn down.

The JDURC will seek public private partnerships (PPPs) with a number of developers in Saudi Arabia to redevelop over 50 sites, the area of which amounts to 22 hectares of land and is home to around one million people.

In many of the sites, the JDURC hope to maintain the pattern and framework of the houses currently there, but completely redevelop the properties, many of which lack amenities, sewage systems and even electricity.

The plan will also include methods to compensate legal residents currently living in the settlements, and provide loans for them to purchase property once the projects are completed.

Mohammed Munshi, a development engineer with the JDURC told CW Online at Cityscape Jeddah that the redevelopment would reshape the vast areas of the city that have fallen into disrepair.

“It will improve Jeddah, a city which plans to be part of the first world,” he said.

The 54 unplanned settlements have been grouped into four categories, ranked according to their attractiveness to private developers on a sliding scale. Those believed to be the most attractive will be redeveloped first, while some category four sites will be developed by Jeddah’s municipality itself.

The first areas to be redeveloped will be Khozan and Al Ruwais, both close to Jeddah’s historical district and home to some 200,000 people. Munshi stressed that the historical streetscape of the area would have to be taken into account by architects.

“They will try not to change the slum street plan, they will try to keep the same pattern, the same network. So the people can keep the community,” he said.

Many of Jeddah’s unplanned settlements have been classified slums by the United Nations (UN), and were the areas most badly effected by last year’s floods, which killed hundreds of people.