RIYADH: Experts in economics and urban development stressed the importance of reconciling economic development with preserving the environment during a virtual panel discussion organized by 'the Center for Local Governance' at Prince Sultan University in Riyadh on Monday.
The panel discussion, entitled “Managing the City Economy: Challenges, Strategies and Opportunities” and moderated by the economist Talat Hafez, was attended by Prince Faisal bin Ayyaf, mayor of Riyadh, and several local and international experts.
Le-Yin Zhang, professor of urban economic development at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London, noted that the fastest-growing cities are in three countries: China, India and the US.
HIGHLIGHT
Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp professor of economics at Harvard University, said it was necessary to reformulate economies to balance investment against concern for the environment.
Zhang, who is also the author of “Managing the City Economy,” stressed that the net-zero agenda was a crucial step toward a green economy.
A huge challenge facing urban economies is that the annual rate of decarbonization must rise by 500 percent, she explained, noting that income from oil and gas sales will be halved in the 2020s.
She pointed to three main opportunities for innovation to achieve net-zero: through the development of advanced batteries, the hydrogen electrolyzer and direct air capture and storage. These were in addition to equipment manufacturing, infrastructure and low-carbon services, such as photovoltaics and electric vehicles.
“A new competitiveness could be developed in the process,” she said, citing China’s city of Shenzhen, which alone produced more than 40 percent of electric vehicle batteries globally in 2021.
She concluded that developing countries needed to find a new force in this technology landscape and that it was “necessary to balance fear and optimism in the net-zero drive.”
Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp professor of economics at Harvard University, said it was necessary to reformulate economies to balance investment against concern for the environment.
Glaeser, who is also the chairman of the Department of Economics at Harvard, confirmed the importance of technology and innovation in achieving sustainability.
Dr. Said Al-Shaikh, director-general of the Studies and Consultation Center at the University of Business and Technology, focused on the main challenges facing the quickly growing cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. Their rapid development raises concerns about the high dependence on oil exports earnings and an unsustainable increase in water consumption.
He warned that the increase in the size of large cities engenders already low-density suburbanization, leading to continued reliance on private cars for transportation, leading to increased environmental pollution.
“Urban primacy is an indication of lopsided development and poses complex challenges, [including the decline] of the rural economy, which widens the development gap between rural and urban regions and also aggravates urban sprawl, congestion and environmental degradation,” he added.
Al-Shaikh, the chief economist at the National Commercial Bank between 1998 and 2018, noted that the service sector is most relevant due to momentum generated by the high earnings of oil exports, which stimulate trade and create a need for financial services and government administration services. Agriculture’s share in the gross domestic product, however, has fallen across all cities.
“This sectoral economic transformation has led to changing spatial population concentration with 26 percent total in Makkah, 25 percent in Riyadh and 15 percent in [the] Eastern Province, accounting for 66 percent of the population in 2017, up from 64 percent in 1992,” he said.
“Conversely, there has been a slow growth in middle-size cities and a dramatic decline in the proportion of the urban population living in cities of fewer than 300,000 inhabitants.”
He affirmed that urban primacy offers a wide range of benefits, including better infrastructure, which leads to higher productivity and greater employment opportunities.
“But primacy has led to neglect of other cities, resulting in a remarkable regional imbalance in the country’s development,” he added.
