ABSTRACT
The city of Riyadh (plural of rawdhah, oasis) was founded on the ruins of several communities around 1740. Although it was chosen as the capital of the second Saudi state in 1824, it came to prominence only after its independent governor, Abdulaziz AlSaud, began a campaign to consolidate modern Saudi Arabia in 1902. The speed and scale of Riyadh’s transformation since, particularly during the 1970s, has had few parallels. From a walled city of less than 1 square kilometer in 1920, it has grown into a sprawling modern capital of 1,500 square kilometers. Its population has increased from an estimated 14,000 in 1902, to 666,480 in 1974, to more than 2.8 million in 1992, to an estimated 3.5 million by 1998.
