A case study of what is arguably the largest civil construction project undertaken in modern times: the building of two industrial cities, Jubail and Yanbu, on the edge of the Arabian desert. Based upon thousands of pages of Saudi documents, interviews with Saudi officials and their American business partners at Bechtel and Ralph M. Parsons, and the author's first-hand knowledge of the projects, the work paints a picture of modern urban planning on a grand scale and documents two of the largest developmental projects in the world. This study will be of interest to students and scholars of urban planning and development, civil engineering, and Middle East studies.

Over the last two decades, at a cost of about $60 billion, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has constructed the largest public works projects in history--the new industrial cities of Jubail, on the Gulf, and Yanbu, on the Red Sea, the home of a huge and sophisticated petrochemical industry that claims over eight percent of the world market. Beginning with the discovery of oil in the 1930s and the attempts of King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud and his successors to marshal the inflows of wealth productively, the book emphasizes the Saudis' determination to break what one senior official has called the iron ring that imprisons underdeveloped countries.

The evolution of the Saudis' capacity to plan such large projects; their creation of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, an independent super-agency with the power to cut through red tape and make multi-billion dollar moves on its own; their partnership with Bechtel Corporation and the Ralph M. Parsons Co. in the design and construction of the modern Saudi cities; the roles of entities such as Aramco and the SABIC; and the effects of the Gulf War are also described. Whatever the future will bring, including severe budget difficulties caused by dwindling oil revenues, and a continuing shortage of skilled manpower, the fact remains: the cities are there, raised from the desert sands. Their factories and refineries are up and running, increasingly managed by the Saudis themselves and, by all measures, highly competitive and profitable. Saudi Arabia, undeveloped and pastoral until a few decades ago, has achieved in less than 25 years what required the better part of a century in Europe and America.