للكاتبين
Dr. Dr. Umar G. Benna Fahad N. Al-Harigi
Department of Urban and Regional Planning
College of Architecture and Planning, King Faisal University
For centuries city development has been shaped by the
cumulative activities of individual’s social groups, firms
and various types of institutions using place-based faceto-
face interactions. The recent convergence of many
information technologies has led to the emergence of an
alternative cyberspace-based means of interactions. This
paper seeks to explore the potentials and limits of this
alternative means as it is applied in the Saudi cities. Based
on websites survey of the key urban actors in selected
Saudi Arabian cities, the paper explores the extent to
which the city’s residents, firms and institutions use the
cyberspace to undertake activities that were previously
carried out only by means of place-based face-to-face
interactions.
This paper discusses, documents and analyzes websites'
contents of a sample of urban actors so as to identify the
activities that can be carried out through cyberspace, and
finally it assesses the implications of web-based
interactions on physical development of Saudi cities. The
study confirms that websites activities tend to influence
urban physical development through resource utilization
which may have an effect on land uses and some urban
activities.
Key words: Cyberspace, Urban activities, City
development, Saudi Arabian cities, Islamic cities.