1985 Makky Biblingual City Plan of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

This is Ghazy Abdulwahed Makky's 1985 large-format bilingual (Arabic-English) city plan or map of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It captures the city during a period of tremendous growth, as a new urban plan was being implemented to meet the city's rapidly accumulating population.

A Closer Look

This large map covers the entire city of Riyadh and its surroundings. Quarters of the city, major streets, highways (several under construction), parks, landmarks, and topographic features are labeled throughout. A grid surrounds the map, corresponding to an extensive index of government offices and ministries, schools and universities, hospitals, markets, major businesses, cultural sites, banks, hotels, airline offices, and foreign diplomatic offices, while a separate index at bottom lists neighborhoods. An inset map at top-left displays the campus of King Saud University, while an inset at top-right displays the central part of the city. The recto main map is reproduced on a smaller scale in English on the verso, while the verso also contains insets of the northern and southern part of the city center on a larger scale. The extensive index from the recto is translated, while an English street index and a bilingual legend appear on the verso as well.

Evidence of the city's transformation can be seen throughout, both in the ghosted-in new urban quarters and in the repurposing of existing areas. For instance, the 'Old Airport' (المطار القديم) near center was replaced with King Khalid International Airport, which opened in 1983 far to the north of the city (indicated by an airplane here). Originally well beyond the developed part of the city, the Old Airport had become surrounded by housing, necessitating its relocation. Meanwhile, the Old Airport site became the King Salman Air Base of the Royal Saudi Air Force, which was also recently relocated, with the Old Airport site now being transformed into a massive urban park (King Salman Park), set to be one of the largest in the world when completed.

Historical Context

The development of Riyadh from a small walled city of low-slung buildings in 1950 to the megalopolis seen today is one of the most dramatic transformations of urban space in world history. King Saud (r. 1953 - 1964), determined to make Riyadh into a modern metropolis, began by demolishing the city walls and reworking the city's layout on a grid pattern with main arteries at regular intervals. Flush with cash following the discovery and exploitation of oil resources, the Saudi government financed an ambitious urban plan laid out by a Greek consulting firm in the early 1970s, which was later amended to account for a larger-than-expected population. But by the mid-1980s, when this map was made, even the amended plan was already proving inadequate (the city's population grew from some 500,000 in 1972 to nearly 4 million by the early 1990s). Subsequent urban plans were adopted to account for the booming population, and soon new urban quarters sprang up, leaving the city's historic core a small dot in a sea of urban development. The city continues to transform today; in addition to the King Salman Park mentioned above, Riyadh has also added additional parks and trees, opened an extensive metro system in late 2024 (with six lines built simultaneously), and restored the House of Saud's original capital at al-Dariyah (الدرعية), at left here.

Publication History and Census

This map was prepared by Ghazy Abdulwahed Makky (غازي بن عبد الواحد. مكي) of the King Saud University Department of Geography and printed by Esselte Map Service (Esselte Kartor) of Stockholm, Sweden in 1985 (1405 AH). Due to its bilingual title, it is variously cataloged in English, Arabic, or transliterated (Romanized) Arabic, but in any event is held by eight institutions worldwide, including three in North America: the Library of Congress, the University of Utah, and Ball State University. Later editions (1986, 1988, 1989) are listed among the holdings of seven institutions in the OCLC.