Can Oman Build a Better Planned City?

The petro-states of the Persian Gulf do not lack for outlandish and ambitious urban projects: See the man-made islands of Dubai, a supertall curved skyscraper in Kuwait, or the enormous clock tower in Mecca that’s the size of six Big Bens. The region also has a particular penchant for planned cities—scratch-built instant metropoli built in the hope of diversifying economies that rely heavily on oil.

But these projects don’t always live up to their lofty expectations. After more than a decade, only about a quarter of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Economic City has been developed, and it houses less than 10,000 of its projected 2 million inhabitants. In the United Arab Emirates, Masdar City, outside of Abu Dhabi, is a sparsely populated technology incubator instead of the dense settlement that was envisaged. And Al Madina A’Zarqa, or Blue City, was to be an Omani city of 200,000 but hasn’t come to pass due to financing woes and a lack of demand for the land.