Spatial planning authorities at the national, regional and specifically at the local level have been criticised for their capability to achieve their prescribed aims and respond to citizens‟ needs (Daghistani, 1991; Mandeli, 2010). The criticism of the urban government system attracted a lot of scholarly attention, who have addressed various issues with the system of urban government that constrains the capacity of planning authorities. According to Daghustani (1992), centralisation is one of the main issues that cause weakness in the planning system. The
Municipa lity Approval Modifications Developer Architectural Office Yes No
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centralised approach was part of the government philosophy, especially, in the early years of the existence of the Kingdom to ensure that resources are allocated fairly. Yet, the hypercentralisation of the Saudi government in the decision- making process has hindered the ability of local authorities to implement planning policies and regulations and prevents them from developing their capacity. This was agreed with by Mandeli in 2008 and 2010. Abu-Suliman in his work in (1996) classified centralisation into two parts, first, the centralisation of administrative authority, where actions of local administrative authorities are dominated by the central government. Second the centralisation within the organisation as practiced within the Municipality itself. In addition, according to Abu-Suliman (1996: 63) the American consultant Wilson-Murrow considered in his study that “city autonomy [is] essential for effective city administration”. Therefore, Wilson-Murrow proposed to elevate the administrative status of the municipalities to minimize the state power and intervention. According to Grant (1982), it is paradoxical that the administration of land use planning is considered a matter of local authority and power is at the central government.
Owing to centralisation, bureaucracy or „red tape‟ process within the system affects the capacity and performance of planning agencies. In some cases it might lead to corrupt activity, in order to avoid some of the strict rules and accelerate the process. It slows planning authorities‟ ability to cope with changes, especially in fast growing cities like Jeddah, by delaying important decisions and actions which might waste valuable time (Abu-Suliman, 1996). This was agreed with by Mandeli in 2008.
Mashabi in his work in (1995) talked about the issue of the lack of both horizontal coordination, or cooperation among different local agencies responsible for planning and development, and vertical coordination, or cooperation between the planning agencies at the national level and those responsible for implementation at the local level. In addition, he clarified that in the process of preparing and implementing a master plan a range of actors and agencies are involved over which the Municipality has no influence or power. This was agreed with by other commentators such as Abdulaal and Aziz Rahman (1998) who clarified that there is difficulty coordinating between municipalities
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and other government agencies not only during to the plan preparation but also throughout implementation. In addition, Garba (2004) and Mandeli (2010) agreed that there is a lack of coordination, where each of the planning agencies at different levels work independently and disconnected from the others, to the extent that their senior officers were hardly in mutual communication. Recently, the Provincial Council of Makkah has developed various forms of cooperation and coordination with municipalities including Jeddah Municipality. Fragmentation of responsibility within the planning system is another issue that was referred to by Garba (2004) which was agreed with by Mandeli (2008 and 2010). At the local level, officers in the Municipality avoid taking responsibility for decisions affecting the built environment and the people. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 8.
According to Abu-Suliman (1996: 64) Wilson-Murrow observed in the mid- 1960s that the Municipality of Jeddah was very dependent on the central government for its operating budget. Thus, Wilson-Murrow raised a question: “how could the city attain autonomy and control over the city‟s domestic issues while most of its budget at that time came from the central government?” This was agreed by Al-Hathloul and Mughal in (1999) and later by Mandeli (2010), where municipalities are subject, to high degree, to the central government for funding, where all financial resources are mainly allocated at this tier. In addition, Mandeli in his work in (2008) mentioned that municipalities suffer from a lack of financial resources. According to Abdulaal (2007) and Mandeli (2008) municipalities are facing financial constraints, because of the expansion of the administrative area for cities and responsibilities, which have increased to much a greater proportion than the annual Municipal budget. This, according to Al- Eidiny (2000), determines the implementation quality for plans and projects. All municipalities in the country are required to prepare their annual budget and send it to the MOMRA. The MOMRA sends the budgets to the Ministry of Finance for approval by the COM, and then the MOF allocates the budget of the MOMRA, which in turn allocates the annual budget for each Municipality according to the MOMRA‟s development priorities. The central government allocates approximately four per cent of the national budget to the MOMRA (MOFP, 2011). In addition to the MOMRA fund, municipalities rely on different sources
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to improve their revenue such as subsidies, direct donations from wealthy families to fund public amenities, outbidding, penalty fees and building permission fees. The idea of local investment was an innovative step to overcome the shortfalls in funding was taken by the Jeddah Municipality, under the shadow of MOMRA, to maximise Municipal investments (Mandeli, 2010). The move was circulated and adopted by all the municipalities in Saudi Arabia. This will be discussed in Chapter 6.
The concentration of economic and political power at the national level provides opportunities for corrupt practice (Healey, 2006). Abu-Suliman (1996) talked about corruption in the system, where according to him there are different forms of corruption, such as nepotism, favouritism and formalism. In the first two forms of corruption, officers treat citizens with relativism and selective favouritism. In terms of formalism, the officers might become „opportunistic‟ by relying on the system to weave in the rules and processes needed to maximise their own interests. The existence of corruption is unacceptable and is difficult to prove because it happens behind closed doors, as reported in Abu-Suliman‟s work (1996). In terms of accountability the government established the Control and Investigation Board at the national level by a Royal Decree in 1971 to monitor any financial and administrative violations by individuals or organisations and to send those who violate laws for investigation. In addition, the government inspectors in each Ministry conduct investigations to ensure that the regulations have been followed at the regional and local levels. In 2010, a Royal Decree was issued to establish the National Anti-Corruption Authority at the national level after a major flood in Jeddah to investigate corruption. Although, there is duality in the duties of the two national boards, they are independent from one another and both of them exist at the national level. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 6, 7 and 8.
Personal preference is another issue raised by Abu-Suliman (1996), where he considered personality as an important factor in the Saudi context that influences the mechanisms and dynamics of how successful or corrupted the administrative authority operates. Some mayors prefer decentralisation, others prefer the opposite, and some give more attention to administrative reforms whilst others
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give attention to city planning. The personality of some of the mayors weakens the performance of the municipalities, because some administrative policies lead to corruption and tedious and inefficient bureaucracy. Similar to the personality of the chairman of the Municipal Council, where some of them made the Council active others the opposite.
The planning system has been criticised for the lack of public participation by many scholars. According to Mashabi (1995) Garba (2004) and Mandeli (2008), there is a lack of public participation, where citizens are not involved at any stage of plan preparation or in planning decisions and process. In addition, they also feel powerless because they are excluded from planning decisions, making them feel a lack of ownership for or belonging to the place they live in. According to Dahlan (1990), there are some constraints and problems that impede citizens‟ participating in the decision-making process. On the one hand, some issues are beyond citizens‟ control, owing to the nature of the system, as there is no institutionalised place for residents‟ voice in the system. This was agreed on by Garba (2004) and Mandeli (2008), where they agreed that there is not a direct public participation platform for identifying the action priorities for which policy should be adapted to regulate urban growth. This will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 6, 7 and 8.
Abu-Suliman clarified in his work in (1996) that communications between the Municipality‟s officers and residents provide opportunities to avoid problems and expedite the planning process and especially implementation. This will be explored in greater depth in Chapter 8. People in Saudi Arabia become aware that there are in some countries more opportunity of the layman‟s voice. Therefore, a reform in the political system was conducted by the government as a means for encouraging Saudis to participate in decision-making through the elections of the Municipal Councils (Ammoun, 2006). On the other hand, some of the barriers against participation arise from the citizens themselves, such as citizens‟ lack of knowledge of where, how and when to participate as it is happening in the elections of Municipal Councils. Although there are some active citizens, others are apathetic and dependent on the government and simply they do not want to be involved in national or local government affairs (Dahlan, 1990). Women remain
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excluded from this platform, but are promised inclusion by 2015. According to Dahlan (1990), citizens of both genders are required to participate, as they are considered primary forces that influence the government in the performance of its activities. According to Mandeli (2008) to address issues related to participation, cultural realities should be considered.
In terms of clarity, the multiple roots of complaint is unclear in the Saudi system where or to whom complaints regarding a planning issue should be directed. This issue might have indirect impact on the capacity of the planning system. According to the Law 1941 Sec. 4/24 (the Roads and Buildings Law) the King is one of the governmental bodies that citizens can appeal to if they have a problem. The Board of Grievance was established in 1955 to receive citizens‟ grievances against governmental Ministries and agencies such as the MOMRA and Municipality (Aba-Namay, 1993). According to the Law of 1977 (the Municipalities and Villages) Sec. 5/47, the Minister of the MOMRA deals with planning issues. The Municipality of Jeddah established an Appeals Committee to deal with peoples‟ complaints against any decision. Although, some people go to MC to object against some of the Municipality‟s decisions, the role of the MC is unclear in the 1977 law regarding complaining. However, the MC members believe that it is part of their job to listen to people‟s problems based on Sec. 2/2, where the MC gives its opinion on any presented case (see Chapter 8). Eventually, local and appeal courts are other alternatives, where people could go to complain, as happened in Riyadh during the 1970s (Al-Hatloul, 1981). A question can be asked: Which one of these mechanisms are appropriate and most effective? Of course the King could not be bothered with small matters to him but is big and important to others.
There is a system of compensation in Saudi Law to compensate those harmed. However, as much as the mechanism of complaint is unclear, the mechanism of compensation is equally unclear. According to the Law of 1941, compensation is paid if there is an expropriation of properties (land or building). Also, according to the same law compensation is paid if there was any harmful affect (person or private property) coming from government projects. However, it is not clear how
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compensation is decided upon, particularly in cases affecting individual people‟s properties.
Daghustani in his wok in (1991) talked about the issue of inexperienced or under qualified and inadequately trained staff for dealing with urban issues and using of technology. This issue was later on agreed by other commentators such as Mashabi (1995), Garba (2004) Abdulaal (2007) and Mandeli (2008; 2010). The absence of skilled and qualified staff has weakened the role of the Municipality in preparing, implementing and enforcing master plans, which inevitably leads to a reliance on foreign expertise (Garba, 2004 and Mandeli, 2010). According to Mandeli (2008), to adopt new set of zoning regulations municipalities are required to improve the capacity of its staff in terms of trade skills and expertise knowledge in order to successfully implement the suggested regulations. In addition, he points out that the continual problem of inadequately skilled officers within municipalities attests to the failure of the centralised system by the MOMRA.
According to Abdulaal (2007) municipalities in Saudi Arabia suffer from lack of useful information, which hinders municipal officers‟ ability to make decisions and address urban problems and could lead decision makers to take a wrong decision. This issue will be seen in some cases in Chapter 8. This is attributed to three data issues: initial data collection, keeping data up-to-date and data management. In addition, the existing Municipal data suffers from deficiency, complexity and disorganisation (Abdulaal, 2007). Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide adequate and reliable data so that decision makers can obtain the required information to support their decisions (Abdulaal, 2007). Thus, Saudi municipalities are working hard to enhance their performance and increase their effectiveness by using advanced information technology by applying E- government systems, using Geographic Information System (GIS) and creating information centres (Abdulaal, 2007). For instance, municipalities, such as the Jeddah Municipality, are using IT systems to accelerate their working pace and performance standards. There are now online applications for the granting of building permission, GIS is used for data acquisition and analysis, and an Urban Observatory Centre has been established to provide data. zoning regulations
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textbook and master plan can be found on the Jeddah Municipality website. Despite the implementation of advanced technologies, the question remains as to how best to harness and utilise the IT system in both the service of the Municipality and the public.
According to Abdulaal and Aziz Al-Rahman (1998) and Mandeli (2010), the mechanism of monitoring and enforcing regulations by municipalities is weak. This is attributed to centralisation in the system and lack of resources, as we will see later in Chapter 8. In addition, the poor coordination among the monitors of an enforcement team has made it difficult for the team to prosecute breaches in planning regulations (Mandeli, 2010).