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"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
When I used to live in Riyadh, the Diplomatic Quarter was one of my favorite areas in the city. Clean, organized and quiet, it felt like a secret oasis within the city. In a way, it was. Since the early 2000’s, access to the neighborhood has been highly restricted due to fear of terrorist attacks targeting the diplomatic missions located there.
I have previously complained about how hard it is to enter the Diplomatic Quarter, or DQ for short, for regular people. I have not been to Riyadh in a few years, but I guess the problems in getting to the DQ remain the same despite the fact that the security situation in the country has improved a lot.
Now in addition to being the semi-official newspaper for the country and the capital’s city namesake, al-Riyadh daily also serves as a newsletter for the Saudi royal family. When a prince gets married, al-Riyadh would typically run pages upon pages full of pictures from the all-male wedding. Such weddings usually take place in a banquet hall called Palace of Culture in the Diplomatic Quarter.
The newspaper recently ran photos from yet another prince’s wedding at the Palace of Culture. That made wonder if there are ever any cultural events held at this place. The answer is yes, but very rarely. Most of the time, it is simply used as a wedding hall for the elites.
As I was doing my research on that location, I came across this interesting piece about the planning and building of the Diplomatic Quarter published in Saudi Aramco World in their September/October 1988 issue. The magazine, published by the national oil company, is one of the oldest publications in the country.
Unlike the current the situation where the DQ feels blocked from the rest of the city by multiple security checkpoints guarded by squads of heavily armed and grumpy security forces, the original vision for the area was that it would be a “normal neighborhood.” Mohamed Alshaikh, president of ArRiyadh Development Authority (ADA), who has spearheaded the project when in the late 1970’s, told the magazine:
“Physically, functionally and socially, the quarter is by no means separate from the rest of Riyadh,” he says. In fact, “diplomatic mission personnel will number less than 10,000” of the DQ’s projected 22,000 inhabitants, and the quarter will be “a normal neighborhood of Riyadh, with priority to the diplomats.”
For current residents of Riyadh, the DQ is anything but a normal neighborhood. Alshaikh went on to say that they did not want a “ghetto feeling develop” in the quarter. Planners wanted it to serve as a model for future urban development in Riyadh. That obviously did not happen. More than twenty years later, some would say that the rest of the city feels like a ghetto compared to the much nicer Diplomatic Quarter.
What went wrong? Nothing in the Diplomatic Quarter itself, but almost everything around it.
Driving my car in King Fahad Road the other day, I was listening to MBC-FM’s Rana al-Qassim. The blabbering radio host has come to be associated in my mind with her overuse of the brotherly salutation “akhoi,” an attempt to deter the sexual advances of drooling Saudi callers, I guess. Although I think her “akhoi” sounds more patronizing than brotherly, but that’s beside the point. Anyways…
The ever-confident Rana has decided to tackle the dilemma of zahma, aka the chronic congestion of Riyadh streets. As calls came in from people telling her their stories of daily horror and misery on the roads, Rana insisted that she wants to hear no whining or complaining. “I want solutions!” she exclaimed in her oh-I’m-so-good-at-this-radio-thing voice. The few calls I had the misfortune to hear offered some pretty innovative suggestions. “Ban all foreigners from driving,” one caller said. “Take old people off the streets,” another one demanded. None of the callers I heard said anything about public transportation.
How can a modern city of 6.5m people survive without a public transportation system would probably be a mystery to urban planners for years to come. But fear not, fellow Riyadhians! Arriyadh Development Authority (ADA) got your back. They will make a metro for us, after all. And No, that’s not because they are jealous of Dubai. I mean, seriously, Dubai who? How can anyone compare our historical city to this tiny emirate? The first reaction from officials in Riyadh upon hearing that the Dubai Metro would launch in 9/9/9 9:9:9 was something like: meh.
So yeah, Dubai launched their metro with much fanfare. Pretty cool, huh? Well, this is not how we do business in the magic kingdom. The plans for Riyadh Light Transit Railway (LTR) were revealed to Arab News by an unnamed source in the ADA. He gave away some supersecret information about the project, but one little, important detail was missing from the story: when can we expect this new metro to start operating?
I suppose ADA don’t have to worry about concealing this tidbit of info, or even falling behind schedule if there is one, because there is no one in charge to make sure that they deliver on their promises on time. What about the municipal council, you may ask. Sorry, they are too busy ensuring that men and women do not mingle during the upcoming Eid celebrations.
"Tell the chef, the beer is on me."
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