by a European Urban Planner Practicing on the Arab Peninsula

I arrived in Saudi Arabia with a well-worn European planner’s toolkit—deep respect for history, a belief in incremental progress, and a quiet confidence in process over speed. While that had been questioned by previous work in South-East Asia, like many of my colleagues back home, I had been told by extensive media coverage to view the Gulf with a mixture of skepticism and fascination. Spectacle, not substance. Cities built in years instead of generations. Form without civic foundation. But after some time of working here, my view has changed. I now see that while much of what happens on the Arab Peninsula confounds European orthodoxy, it also offers something Europe is in need of: permission to reinvent.

Yet the lessons don’t flow one way. If the Peninsula offers boldness, Europe offers balance. And while European planners can—and must—learn from the tactical agility and climate responsiveness emerging here, the Gulf’s urban future also depends on absorbing the hard-won lessons of European civic life, social cohesion, and ecological continuity. This is not a one-sided story of awakening, but a two-way street of mutual learning.

The planning culture I grew up in, particularly in the Netherlands, is grounded in consensus. It values layered narratives, long horizons, and the slow accumulation of civic infrastructure. These are admirable traits—but they are also paralysing when urgency is required. In the face of climate change, housing crises, and social fragmentation, our systems often default to inertia. We know how to plan, but we’ve forgotten how to act. Our rulebooks are thick, our consultations endless, our ambitions modest. We have perfected the art of saying “not yet.”

By contrast, here in Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf, there is a willingness to act first and calibrate later. A deep cultural memory of building in extreme climates, combined with massive state-led investment, has led to a planning culture that is astonishingly experimental. I’m not referring to the headline-grabbing mega-projects—the vertical cities or artificial ski resorts—but to the under-the-radar initiatives that quietly reshape everyday life: the revitalisation of heritage districts not as static museum pieces but as evolving, lived-in neighborhoods; the rise of community-led reactivations of underused public spaces; the shift toward micro-parks and shaded pedestrian routes that respond not to global trends but to local needs.

What makes these initiatives powerful is their fluidity. Regulations are often written to accommodate change rather than to prevent it. There is room to fail—and fail fast. There’s an understanding that urban life cannot be prescribed from the top but must be negotiated in real time. In Riyadh, I’ve seen sidewalks redesigned within weeks of citizen feedback; in Sharjah, historic urban fabric has been preserved not by exclusion but by inclusion—allowing artists, small business owners, and residents to reshape space without a master plan.

This is something Europe must learn: that cities are not moral projects to be perfected, but living systems to be tuned. Our obsession with authenticity often leads us to preserve decay instead of supporting renewal. We defend process over possibility. We fear being wrong more than we desire being effective.

But this openness, this urban courage that I’ve come to admire on the Peninsula, has its shadow side. Speed, while exhilarating, is not a substitute for depth. Many initiatives remain performative—consultations are announced but rarely meaningful, public spaces built but not stewarded, sustainability referenced but not measured. Civic life is still emergent here, often overshadowed by paternalistic structures. The rituals of democracy—messy, slow, contentious—are often absent. The result is a planning culture that is rich in vision but thin in civic trust.

Here is where the Peninsula must learn from Europe. From its painful, sometimes maddeningly slow, commitment to participation. From its belief that cities must serve the weakest, not just the boldest. From its understanding that the most resilient urban systems are those co-created by the many, not imagined by the few.

There is also a tendency here to over-specify aesthetics and underinvest in maintenance. Streets are built quickly, often beautifully, but the question of how they will endure—who will care for them, who will claim them—remains unanswered. In Europe, our strength lies in the mundane: in sewage systems no one notices, in bus lines that just work, in quiet squares that host a thousand stories. The Peninsula, in its race toward the future, must remember that the soul of a city lies not in the skyline but in the street corner.

We also must be cautious not to romanticize the Gulf’s flexibility. It thrives in part because its planning systems are still immature. Flexibility can become arbitrariness. Participation can become performance. Innovation, without the ballast of institutional memory, can become a cycle of reinvention that forgets its own lessons.

As someone who straddles both worlds, I find myself longing for a synthesis. A planning culture that combines Europe’s civic patience with the Peninsula’s urban audacity. A system that allows bold ideas to flourish, but subjects them to public scrutiny. A city that moves fast, but not blindly. A city that listens, but doesn’t freeze in the face of conflict.

To my colleagues in Europe, I offer this: begin to treat your cities less as monuments to be preserved and more as organisms to be renewed. Dare to loosen your regulatory grip—not in the name of deregulation, but in service of adaptability. Rediscover the radical potential of public space as a site for negotiation, not just consensus. Let climate shape your urban form from the start, not as an afterthought. And above all, reawaken a sense of urban urgency. The Arab Peninsula, for all its contradictions, reminds us that cities are made by those who act—not just those who plan.

And to my colleagues on the Arab Peninsula: Build civic institutions that match your design ambition. Trust your people not only to use the city, but to shape it. Beauty fades without stewardship. Vision crumbles without dialogue. Speed, without justice, is just acceleration toward irrelevance.

The future of cities is neither in Rotterdam nor Riyadh alone. It is in the unfinished dialogue between them. And it’s time we started listening better.