Planning for Security of Space in the Traditional and Contemporary Community: The Experience of Saudi Arabia‪.‬

Introduction Historically, the issue of security for residents and their property often had a decisive impact on the built form of the traditional settlements of the Arabian Peninsula due to the constant threat of tribal raids among its inhabitants. The rise of the third house of the Saud dynasty in 1932 brought the birth of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the abandonment of tribal raiding. As a consequence, the urban system began to be reorganized. A number of new neighborhoods with urban characteristics different from those of the traditional ones were planned beyond settlement walls, although planning of residential quarters in this transitional period applied design principles which did not deviate much from the traditional. The same building techniques were used, but the streets were much wider and straight; however the semi-private spaces of the housing clusters and the private spaces of the individual houses continued to be emphasized. The discovery of oil gave rise to new neighborhood concepts. The urbanization in Europe and the U.S.A. exhibited a variety of influences on implemented models and design preferences (Al-Mubarak, 1992). Although modernization brought many benefits, it was not without its problems, most notably that these foreign neighborhood designs (incorporating the grid-iron system) and individual dwelling units gave unlimited access of space, creating problems with respect to security. Today planners and architects often place concerns such as aesthetics, construction cost and new technologies among those deemed much more important. In fact, many professionals consider security as an anathema that restricts their freedom of design.