توسعه شهری پایدار بالا به پایین: تحول حکمرانی شهری

ABSTRACT Top-down sustainable urban development? Urban governance transformation in Saudi Arabia

The awareness of the relevance of urban governance and political will to achieving sustainable development has been increasing in recent times. They are part of the institutional framework that is needed to nurture social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The institutional framework has been recognized as an important aspect of sustainable development by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNSCD, 1996). It is regarded as a sustainability dimension with themes such as integrated decision making, governance, disaster preparedness, capacity building and public participation (UNSCD, 1996). The report of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development indicated that strong political will is required in the quest towards sustainable development and efforts must be made in strengthening institutional frameworks (UN, 2012).

In a study of the environmental assessment (EA) procedure, as an example, Cashmore and Richardson (2013) opined, that power or politics cannot be divorced from the EA process. Power influences the EA procedures and outcomes and it needs to be considered to better understand EA practice (Cashmore & Richardson, 2013). Environmental assessment has been recognised as a procedure that can be integrated with plans and policies to promote urban sustainability (Alshuwaikhat, Aina, & Rahman, 2006; He et al., 2011). Environmental assessment is a valuable tool that decision-makers can use to evaluate proposed and existing policies, plans and programmes (PPP) and their alternatives with a view to achieving sustainable development (Alshuwaikhat et al., 2006). Whether in an EA-based process or in regular decision-making on sustainable development, the role of politics or power dynamics cannot be disregarded. Hansen, Kornov, Cashmore, and Richardson (2013) asserted that power has a significant influence on decision making by enabling or constraining the actors involved in the process.

Despite the realisation of the importance of power dynamics and urban governance in fostering sustainable development, their roles have not been fully explored in research (Cashmore & Richardson, 2013). “In designing policies for sustainable development, the importance of the governance dimension is often either under-estimated or ignored altogether” (McNeill et al., 2014). Patterson et al. (2017) asserted that the governance dimension of the societal transition to sustainability has not been adequately addressed in the literature.

Though governance more generally has been endlessly theorised, including in relation to urban development, sustainable urban development discussions should proceed with references to such debates. Jordan (2008) suggested that scholars should focus on the relationship between governance interventions and their outcomes rather than a simple description of the mode of governance. Also, many countries, especially in the global South, have not implemented adequate institutional frameworks and good urban governance that could engender sustainable development. It is questionable if the political will, that is fundamental to the formulation and implementation of sustainability policies, exists in many countries (Borel-Saladin and Turok, 2013).

Moreover, on the one hand, there may be a tendency to assume that ‘traditional’ top-down/centralized planning is at odds with SUD; on the other, the role of central government policy remains important in both democratic and non-democratic contexts. Crot (2013) in a study of Masdar City, argued that the non-democratic political context of the UAE poses a challenge to the achievement of sustainability. Crot (2013) posited that non-democratic regimes, governing through a top-down approach, do pursue sustainable urban development but the implementation is moderated by the relationship between a state and its society. The level of implementation of sustainability pursuit depends on the will of the state/leadership to incur the associated political costs (Crot, 2013). However, other studies indicated that, in certain contexts, top-down approaches might play a valuable role in sustainability planning (Cowley, 2015) and provide needed support for collective action in policy implementation and low carbon governance (Liu & Ravenscroft, 2017; Markantoni, 2016). This paper aims to contribute to debates over the extent to which top-down approaches to governance can promote sustainability. It focuses on changes in urban governance through a case study of Saudi Arabia. Government documents and other secondary data sources such as academic literature, newspaper articles and websites were reviewed to depict the trend of sustainable urban governance in Saudi Arabia.

Thereafter, the current practice in Saudi Arabia was compared with the best practices found in the literature to examine the shortcomings and make recommendations for improvement. The following sections of the paper discuss the findings. The first section highlights the role of urban governance in a sustainable development framework. The second section reviews the issues related to urban governance and sustainable development in Saudi Arabia. The third section highlights the recent changes in governance and sustainable urban development in Saudi Arabia. The final section examines the extent to which the recent changes have improved urban sustainability and presents an SEA-based urban development framework for Saudi Arabia.