Riyadh MEDSTAR
Core idea
Metropolitan strategy & structure
Why it matters
Guided desert metropolis growth
Description
MEDSTAR, the Metropolitan Development Strategy for the Arriyadh Region, was prepared in the mid-1990s by the Arriyadh Development Authority (later the Royal Commission for Riyadh City) to guide the long-term growth of the Saudi capital. It combined a fifty-year strategic vision with a structure plan directing expansion along defined corridors, protecting wadis and setting phased urban growth boundaries, and it addressed transport, infrastructure and sub-centre development for a rapidly growing desert metropolis of several million people.
Significance
MEDSTAR is one of the most substantial metropolitan strategies produced in the Gulf, notable for introducing growth-boundary and corridor concepts to a city expanding at exceptional speed. It provided the planning armature for later investments such as the Riyadh Metro and informed subsequent Saudi metropolitan planning practice. It also illustrates the tension, common across the region, between formal strategic frameworks and land-market dynamics driven by large-scale peripheral subdivision.
What shaped it
- The master plan (early 20th c.)
- Ville Contemporaine / Plan Voisin / Ville Radieuse (1922–1933)
- The internal-combustion automobile (1886)
- The urban freeway (mid-20th c.)
Plans it influenced
- Plan Abu Dhabi 2030 (2007)
- Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan (2021)
- Jeddah Strategic Plan (2009)
- Riyadh Green Riyadh & Four Megaprojects (2019–)
- King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD), Riyadh (2006–)
Sources
- https://file.scirp.org/Html/7-1150228_75204.htm
- http://www.daralriyadh.com/en/portfolio/metropolitan-strategy-for-arriyadh/