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Cities in the Arabian Peninsula: Introduction

A main narrative obscures our comprehension of cities in the Arabian Peninsula: the one that sees them as ephemeral creations of the oil economy. In its most extreme version, this narrative goes like this: before oil, Arabian towns were a product of the desert, of tribalism and of the sea. After the discovery of oil, they became ‘oil cities’ whose elites imported urbanism and architecture from the rest of the world as if they were mere commodities (Salama and Wiedmann 2013, 14–34). These cities are now on their way to becoming ‘post-oil cities’ where neoliberal reforms aim at diversifying the economy and attracting foreign direct investments. This narrative is both attractive and inaccurate. Before oil, Arabian Peninsula towns were the product of a variety of dynamics, from transoceanic commerce to pilgrimage routes to merchant and state power. Mecca, Medina, Sana’a, Riyadh and ‘Unayza owed little to tribalism, and even less to the desert or the sea. Jeddah, Aden, Muscat, Dubai, Manama and Kuwait City were connected to global trade networks long before the discovery of oil. Muscat was for some time the capital of a maritime empire spanning the Indian Ocean. Aden was the second busiest port in the world after New York in the 1950s. The discovery of oil was a hugely transformative event in the Arabian Peninsula. Yet, as counterintuitive as this may sound, Arabian Peninsula cities are not ‘oil cities’. Oil revenues did not trigger a political, social or urban revolution, but inserted themselves in previously existing political dynamics that were marked by colonial domination, nation and state building, and social reform. These cities developed at the intersection between elite choices and popular resistance. Dubai, this most emblematic of Arabian Peninsula cities, was an international node even before oil was struck. Moreover, it is because of its limited oil reserves that local elites embarked on the ambitious infrastructure and architectural projects that, in the collective imagination, have become synonymous with oil-based development (Ramos 2010). Everywhere else, oil reinforced existing hierarchies. In Riyadh, Kuwait City and other cities across the Peninsula, oil resources fueled speculative land markets and reinforced the power of local elites. The label ‘oil city’ is actually as hazy as its cognate, ‘oil state’. Timothy Mitchell (2013) recently showed that ‘leading industrialized countries are also oil states’, since ‘without the energy they derive from oil their current forms of political and economic life would not exist’ (6). Since all cities are built, operated and navigated thanks to oil, they are also oil cities. To understand the specificity of Arabian Peninsula cities, we ought to look beyond oil and the glossy façade of real estate projects at the variety of actors who produce urban spaces. The authors of this special feature show that Arabian Peninsula cities are no exception to the struggles and processes that make and unmake cities worldwide. From Riyadh to Kuwait City to Dubai, urban spaces are continually produced by conflicts over land, natural resources and power. The protagonists of these conflicts are widely diverse. Kings and emirs, for sure. But also urban planners, investors and developers. Ordinary