ECONOMIC TRENDS OF SAUDI URBAN SYSTEM (1992 – 2010) | ||||
| JES. Journal of Engineering Sciences | ||||
| Article 13, Volume 42, No 1, January and February 2014, Page 216-225 PDF (241.07 K) | ||||
| Document Type: Research Paper | ||||
| DOI: 10.21608/jesaun.2014.114303 | ||||
 View on SCiNiTO | ||||
| Authors | ||||
| Abdulkarim K. Alhowaish; Faez S. Al-shihri | ||||
| Urban and Regional Planning Department, College of Architecture and Planning, University of Dammam | ||||
| Abstract | ||||
| This paper is an investigation of the economic trends of diversification vs. specialization of Saudi urban system over the last eighteen years of analysis (1992 to 2010). This research paper set out to answer three simple questions: (a) between 1992 and 2010, have the Saudi urban economies tended to diversify or to specialize?; (b) have the Saudi urban economies with more diversified economic structure tended to grow faster than those with a more specialized structure?; and (c) over the same period, which economic sectors become more diversified or specialized across the Saudi urban system? The urban system analyzed herein account for approximately 70 percent of the population of the nation and about 58 percent of the workforce of the national total workforce. The findings reveal that, given all the efforts of Saudi governments at all levels to spatially diversify the economic activities through improving the distribution of economic activities across urban places, the majority of Saudi urban places did not change their relative economic structure or their level of diversity during the period of analysis. The majority of Saudi urban places did not change their relative economic structure or their level of diversity between 1992 and 2010. This is verified by two results: (a) The stability of the diversity/specialized index over this period of analysis for all urban places except for a few urban areas; and(b) The fact that more than 63% of all urban areas remain in the same cluster (i.e. HI ≤ 0.3) over the period of analysis. | ||||
| Keywords | ||||
| Urban System; Economic Structure; Diversification; Specialization; Herfindahl Index; Saudi Arabia | ||||
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