Saudi Arabia's new desert megacity

  

With a flourish of his hand, the uniformed security guard waves us down the private road that leads to the newest city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The King Abdullah Economic City, (KAEC, pronounced "cake") is one of four new cities upon which the late monarch pinned his hopes for the future of his realm once the oil runs out.

   

Peppered with cranes, the city - or building site to be more accurate - lies one-and-a-half hour's drive north of Jeddah between the Red Sea and scrubby desert.
Its future depends on balancing the complex and evolving transport, health, education, housing and employment requirements of the city's projected two million residents
According to Fadi Al-Rasheed, the managing director of Emaar Economic City, the publicly traded Saudi company that runs the entire KAEC project, the new generation of Saudis expect a city that matches the modern lifestyle they have grown used to while studying abroad.
"We're building with the 65% of the population who are under 30 in mind," he explains. "And we have almost 200,000 Saudis studying abroad. Inevitably they are going to change things when they come back."
These statistics are compounded by the fact that more women than men graduate from university. These changing demographics are bringing with them new social demands that will likely revolutionise how the country develops.