A European tourist visits Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to see the setting sun on the Red Sea and the city’s unending amenities. Driving along the highway is a blur of luxury. Wide, smooth paved roads pass by palm trees, street lights, and pedestrian pathways. Bold steel buildings jut toward the sky demonstrating the excellence of modern Arab architecture. In a square below, men and women congregate separately for the start of a music show. The city feels like it’s from the future, everything is planned. Walking along the streets, the tourist feels the pulse of Jeddah. Men wear the traditional ankle-length robe thawb with gold Rolexes and women wear the abaya in delicate silk that cover their bodies while showcasing their wealth. Modesty and exorbitance live alongside each other here. This is Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (MBS)’s vision for Jeddah and for Saudi Arabia.
Tourists typically do not venture past the sterile limestone boulevards near the sea, but past the luxury and modernity, al-Kandarah sat. Once with the hope of becoming the next posh district of Jeddah, by 2017 garbage accumulated, water pipes broke, and buildings were abandoned. Today, al-Kandarah is rubble. This is the same story for much of the old towns of Jeddah. Among the goals of MBS’s Vision 2030 is his hope to diversify the Saudi oil-based economy to include tourism. He believes that the cracked stone façade buildings belong in the city’s past. Authorities say that the demolition of these neighborhoods is to create new areas which have proper infrastructure, amenities, and are not criminal hotspots. This reasoning follows the Kingdom’s promotion of a unique family-friendly tourism style. These residential neighborhoods, such as al-Kandarah, will be replaced by flashy art-deco apartments and retail spaces, green parks, and entertainment venues. With the fantastic modernity of MBS, what in Jeddah is lost?
In February 2022, a Twitter video circulated of a young Saudi woman walking around al-Saghr, her soon-to-be demolished neighborhood. For forty-five seconds she waves “goodbye” to the homes of her family and friends. The video ends with her message to al-Saghr: Farewell Al-Saghr, for what it contains of hope, loved ones, and neighbors. Farewell to those who taught me belonging, love, and adoration. Goodbye to the past buried among the rubble of dust.” The woman dares not show her face in the video. Her hand waves in defiance against a vision for her city which excludes her.
The demolitions which started in October 2021 affect 60 neighborhoods and 558,000 residents, reported Amnesty International (AI). “A Jeddah Municipality document shows that project plans were finalized almost three years ago, yet the Saudi authorities failed to engage in a process of genuine consultation with residents” said Diana Semaan, AI’s MENA Acting Deputy Director. Some residents were only given 24 hours to leave after red spray paint on their doors told them to EVACUATE. Without providing proper time to residents, Saudis have become “refugees in their own country” as a Twitter user put it, posting a video of Jeddah’s newly homeless sheltered under a bridge with their surviving belongings. A displaced Saudi doctor, who wished to remain unnamed for fear of government retaliation, said that it is still unclear when or if he will receive compensation for his property’s destruction. The same went for a businessman who had invested in residential and commercial properties in Jeddah for them to be torn down only two months later.
Due to a history of repressive government control, finding residents willing to speak honestly about the demolition’s impact is difficult. In 2020, another of MBS’s grand projects displaced 20,000 people for the construction of the futuristic vacation-city, Neom. Among the displaced, Abdulrahim al-Huwaiti refused to be silent, posting a video to the internet criticizing the government. A day after the video was posted, al-Huwaiti was killed by Saudi special forces. Despite the strong threat posed by the Saudi government, citizens under anonymous usernames have posted Twitter videos and messages with the #hadad_jeddah (“Jeddah_demolition” in Arabic) denouncing the injustices.
The government portrayed the neighborhoods as criminal dens and slums, but residents suspect that the neighborhoods were targeted because “they are home to different nationalities” and, alike Jeddah itself, are socially liberal. Compensation schemes exclude foreign nationals, which make up 47% of the evicted population. Exclusion and discrimination of foreign nationals is a common story in Saudi Arabia. The labour system called kafala allows Saudi companies to employ foreign workers without adequate accommodations, and below the national minimum wage. Additionally, any worker who attempts to leave their job without consent face imprisonment and deportation. Possibly it is not buildings nor architecture that do not fit into MBS’s Vision 2030, but it is the people, themselves, that must go.
Among the MBS’s goals is to increase non-oil government revenue from SAR (Saudi riyal) 163 billion to SAR 1 trillion. He emphasizes the importance of diversifying the Saudi economy beyond oil by investing in the creation of logistic, tourist, financial, and industrial zones. Vision 2030 states that the Kingdom will “create attractions that are of the highest international standards.” For Vision 2030 to be a success from the eyes of the crown prince, Saudi Arabia must become a place that is viewed from the outside with admiration. The Vision 2030 Document reads much as a wish list to create the perfect vacation spot as it does to create a well-functioning, stable economy and society. Despite its recent forays into relaxing the stringencies of daily Saudi life, the Kingdom still remains far more conservative than its neighbors. Tourism marketing has promoted Saudi Arabia as a “family-friendly” tourist destination. “[Saudi government officials] with more moderate viewpoints see this as an opportunity to encourage more reforms in the future, as the presence of foreign tourists introduces more conservative elements of Saudi society to the potential benefits of adopting certain outside influences” while conservative constituencies appreciate that the effort will focus on the family, writes Kevin Newton, the founder of Newton Analytical, a consulting firm specializing in MENA affairs.
As the Saudi government begins to cater itself to a greater quantity of foreign national tourists, it will have more incentives to lessen the strictness of daily life. People will not be satisfied with the luxuries of the cities if they also feel the repressive hand of the government on their shoulders. Naturally, freedoms of expression and behavior would need to be extended to tourists, because if people believe that Saudi Arabia will be hostile towards them then they will not bring their business. This process has gradually already begun, despite push-back from conservative elements of the country. In 2017, cultural events such as a packed musical performances in Riyadh and Comic-Con in Jeddah, which had been outlawed, were given permission to occur in the Kingdom. “What we aim to do is create happiness,” said Ahmed al-Khatib, the Chairman of the General Entertainment Authority (GEA). A year prior, the government declared that the Mutaween, a religious police organization which harass women to remove nail polish, cover their hair, and, in an extreme example, prevented 15 school girls from fleeing a burning building resulting in their death because they did not wear proper Islamic dress, become more “gentle and kind” in their conduct. All of these changes are a ringing dinner bell to a whole host of policies which will create a more open society if just for the sake of visitors.
Although the Saudi government’s incentive to socially liberalize comes from tourists’ sensibilities, as the Saudi economy becomes more dependent on tourism and entertainment revenue, it too will become more dependent on its Saudi hospitality workers and their sensibilities. The threat of government violence will still be present, but any suppressive actions would create more anger by the working class populations who are most subject to strict law enforcement. In 2019, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) reported that travel and tourism comprised 9.8% of Saudi GDP. In the same year, tourism totaled 12.2% of Saudi employment. As MBS continues to accomplish his goals within Vision 2030, both of these numbers will rise. Hospitality workers in Saudi Arabia will gain significant bargaining power to demand more freedom, economically and socially. They will become participants in the economy who will have a voice— whether the government wants to listen or not. No longer will they be subjects to the throne under current petroleum-based rentierism.
Economically empowered by tourism, dissatisfied Saudis will have leverage to protest the government’s inevitable toe-stepping. If the kingdom wants to develop a strong “family-friendly” tourism sector, they have incentive to accommodate their citizens. The horror stories from Jeddah’s neighborhoods turned rubble cannot coexist with the international tourism market. More visibility from visitors and leverage in the hands of workers may make Saudi Arabia look very different in 2030; MBS may not like it.