Chapter 8. Riyadh: Modernity, Tradition and the Quest for Identity

This chapter traces the transformation of Riyadh from a compact desert town to a sprawling, hyper-modern capital, examining how architecture and urban planning were mobilized to construct a national identity, project state power, and accommodate rapid social and economic change. It opens with a historical overview of Riyadh’s urban form prior to the oil boom, highlighting its courtyard houses, mud-brick structures, and fortified compounds—forms rooted in social norms and environmental adaptation.

With the rise of oil wealth in the 1960s, the city underwent massive restructuring under state-led development plans, culminating in the influential Doxiadis master plan and later efforts to impose a modernist grid. Through key case studies—such as the Diplomatic Quarter, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and King Saud University—the chapter explores how Riyadh became a laboratory for architectural experimentation, shaped by global design firms and local aspirations. These projects reveal tensions between tradition and modernity, representation and function, and global aesthetics and regional identity.

The chapter also foregrounds the everyday experience of Riyadh’s residents, including gendered mobility, spatial segregation, and the hidden geographies of migrant labor. It reflects on the contradictions of a city simultaneously marked by Islamic conservatism and cosmopolitan ambition. Recent initiatives such as the Riyadh Metro and Vision 2030 megaprojects are assessed critically, not only for their transformative potential but for the erasures they entail. Ultimately, the chapter positions Riyadh as a paradigmatic example of Gulf urbanism—where modernism is both a symbol of progress and a contested terrain of power, memory, and social negotiation.