Projection for new city future scenarios – A case study for Kuwait

Abstract

The creation of new cities is a planning approach adopted in several regions around the world, in order to accommodate urban growth. New cities are typically constructed according to well-thought out, centralised plans in areas without any prior development. However, whether the development of these new cities is able to address existing urban issues more effectively than traditional methods such as intensification, is currently an unanswered research question. Several Arabian Gulf countries, such as Kuwait are considering the construction of new cities to address urban issues, specifically the traffic congestion and housing shortages. In Kuwait, the master plan for these construction projects was developed solely by state authorities without any public participation or urban modelling that may have provided a more well-rounded view of the potential impacts and effectiveness.This paper aims to address these research opportunities of investigating the effectiveness of new cities in addressing traffic congestion and housing shortage, as well as the potential to integrate public opinions in urban development in the form of a model. Towards that end, the study proposes an Agent Based Model (ABM) that will allow simulating the population distribution and urban growth impacts of new cities in Kuwait by 2050. The methodology involves collecting primary data via interviewing the key government stakeholders of urban development and surveying the residents in order to collect the model inputs. In Kuwait's society, citizens and non-citizens form two distinct resident groups with often very diverse needs and lifestyles; hence the survey responses will differentiate between them. The data from the interviews and surveys from both resident groups will be incorporated as agent behaviours in the ABM. The simulations examine a multitude of scenarios for the new cities, involving construction delays and infrastructure project delays. The results indicate that the impacts of constructing new cities will be favourable across all different scenarios in terms of alleviating the traffic congestion and housing shortage compared to a business as usual approach of existing urban centre expansion. Furthermore, the survey responses confirm that the resident perspectives closely align with the government's priorities in the master plan for the new cities, further improving the chances for the successful project implementation. The methodology and findings may be applied in cities in the Gulf area or elsewhere with similar urban issues.

Optimizing Site Selection of New Cities in the Desert Using Environmental Geomorphology and GIS: A Case Study of Kuwait

“…In fact, delays in development of one new major city were associated with the worst outcomes in regard to traffic congestion and housing shortages. Specifically, assuming that construction of new cities is completed without delays and according to the initial master plan, results indicate a 60% reduction in traffic congestion compared to 2015 levels, and no housing shortage before 2050 [55,56]. It should be noted that, according to the master plan, these predictions require establishing a modern train transportation system with good connectivity to all parts of the State of Kuwait, to facilitate movement and accelerate development processes.…”

External Factors of Delay That Affect the Performance of International Construction Contractors in Kuwait

“…Moreover, the Relative Importance Index (RII) was calculated according to the number of responses that a parameter has got with relative to the other parameter to the total number of responses that this parameter has got in its category by using the previously mentioned equation (2) to calculate the relative importance index for each parameter. In this equation, W is the weight of the delaying factor according to the Likert scale, X is the number of responses per parameter for the impact and frequency categories.…”

Accounting for peoples’ preferences in establishing new cities: A spatial model of population migration in Kuwait

“…The most important issues identified for developing the new plan according to Kuwait government were housing shortages and traffic congestion [50]. According to the planning authorities, future development decisions were made without any input from the residents.…”

“…This paper is part of a larger project that contains two additional scenarios (business as usual scenario: following the historical trends of urban development plus the new master plan scenario: following the government assumptions and perspective) [9, 50, 60]. The new master plan has been evaluated in previous papers from the government perspective without including the residents’ opinions and based on the authorities’ assumptions.…”

“…The new master plan has been evaluated in previous papers from the government perspective without including the residents’ opinions and based on the authorities’ assumptions. The results showed that the plan will provide positive outcomes in terms of housing shortages and traffic congestion if the new cities and the train network can be established on time without delays [50].…”