| HOW SOUATTER SETTLEMENT SPRANG UP IN RIYADH CITY CENTRE AND FRINGES: |
| When stability had prevailed after the unification of Saudi Arabia at the hands of its founder late King Abdulaziz, he designated Riyadh as the capital city of the new kingdom. It was a small village, at the time, covering an area less than one square kilometer. People began to flock in, specially from the desert to seek employment from the government or financial assistance as the economic conditions at that time were in bad shape. Most migrants came from the central region where many Bedouin tribes used to live. |
| Riyadh at that time could not accommodate the newcomers, as housing was only for native residents with no surplus accommodation for immigrants. The new immigrants, however, basically were nomadic and used to live in temporary shelters in the form of tents made of camel hair and skin. So, they erected their tents or shacks, made of zinc sheets, and cardboards, on land spaces which they did not own, and some of them built rooms. These new squatter settlements were characterized by being small, attached to each other and formed in between alleys. The shelters being close, reinforced tribal or fraternal relationships, as most dwellers came from the same tribe or geographic region. |
| The dwellers of these settlements were close and cooperative among themselves in order to overcome hard hips. A new immigrant used to come as a guest to stay in his relatives' shelter, which was already crowded. So, people got together to erect a new a new room for the newcomer. This way the squatter' settlements grew in Riyadh with the inflow of population from the rural desert areas. |
| When the development process began in Riyadh, important industrial and military centers ad been established. These centers recruited un-skilled laborers and guards. Because these centers could not provide housing to their workforce, they went on to erect their shelters around their new workplace. |
| That was how squatter settlements sprang up around some military and economic complexes. The shelters were erected out of corrugated iron sheets, carton cards, and sometimes sun-dried mud bricks. The shelters had neither plans, nor amenities of any sort. Life of the squatter community was simple and resembled in many aspects the lifestyles they followed in the village or desert settlements they left behind. |
| That was the origin of squatter settlements which sprang up in several locations in Riyadh. One of such settlements consisted of 8,000 units. In each settlement a particular geographic or tribal identity was dominant. |
| When the modern development of Riyadh began to expand rapidly according to an urban Master Plan, the squatter settlements appeared to mar the city image, and pose many social and health hazards to the urban community at large. |
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