No abstract

In Saudi Arabia, an array of diverse strategies has been applied in response to the adverse effects of urban sprawl. A review of the historical proliferation of these strategies indicates that although in the short term the strategies have achieved high-quality infrastructure in some parts of the major cities, longer-term prospects are less promising since numerous urban problems persist in these cities. Among these problems are uncontrolled developments in the fringes, inadequate urban services, spiralling land prices and construction costs, the proliferation of slums and degrading quality of the urban environment. This research focuses on urban growth management as an approach for sustainable communities. The study will then discuss urban growth management as a discipline that can empower Jeddah as one of the fastest Saudi major cities to generate better urban development strategies and policies for a new generation of communities. This research paper explores ways to manage Jeddah’s urban growth and new development. The objective is to generate new communities that offer higher standards of living while meeting the challenge inside the existing urban mass by providing the much-needed new policies to limit and control urban growth. It is, therefore, an absolute must begin revising our urban growth and spatial development policies and plans. New theories of urban growth, development and management must be carefully examined and studied, and solutions must be devised, sooner than later, to help promote achieving sustainable urban management in Saudi Arabia.

Type-2 diabetes is a growing lifestyle disease mainly due to increasing physical inactivity but also associated with various other variables. In Saudi Arabia, around 58.5% of the population is deemed to be physically inactive. Against this background, this study attempts explore the spatial heterogeneity of Type-2 diabetes prevalence in Jeddah and to estimate various socio-economic and built environment variables contributing to the prevalence of this disease based on modelling by ordinary least squares (OLS), weighted regression (GWR) and multi-scale geographically weighted (MGWR). Our OLS results suggest that income, population density, commercial land use and Saudi population characteristics are statistically significant for Type-2 diabetes prevalence. However, by the GWR model, income, commercial land use and Saudi population characteristics were significantly positive while population density was significantly negative in this model for 70.6%, 9.1%, 26.6% and 58.7%, respectively, out of 109 districts investigated; by the MGWR model, the corresponding results were 100%, 22%, 100% and 100% of the districts. With the given data, the corrected Akaike information criterion (AICc), the adjusted R2, the log-likelihood and the residual sum of squares (RSS) indices demonstrated that the MGWR model outperformed the GWR and OLS models explaining 29% more variance than the OLS model, and 10.2% more than the GWR model. These results support the development of evidence-based policies for the spatial allocation of health associated resources for the control of Type-2 diabetes in Jeddah and other cities in the Arabian Gulf.

Recent attention has highlighted the importance of providing low‐income households access to opportunity‐rich neighborhoods. Using a neighborhood opportunity framework developed specifically for the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, this study investigates whether low‐income households participating in the program live in opportunity areas. The results indicate that with scarce high‐opportunity neighborhoods, most HCV households reside in mixed opportunity areas and face tradeoffs when deciding where to live. Voucher holders reside in areas with moderate or poor accessibility and neighborhood conditions compared to other assisted and nonassisted low‐income renters. Opportunity outcomes also vary among different household types of HCV recipients.

Considering spatial accessibility of health services is a critical part in the planning and management of health services. There is evidence that poor geographical locations can obstruct prompt basic health care services to some population sections. We developed a location-allocation P-median model for health centres after analysing their sites, demand location of health services and the road network in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This model attempts to optimize health care services network and to put forward location recommendations to maximise service coverage. Our model is shown to be useful as it provides a robust evidence base to urban planners and policymakers responsible for making spatial decisions for the development of the health sector. Besides, it follows the paradigm of new urbanism that encourages decentralisation of essential facilities including basic healthcare in cities, where emphasis is on offering all basic services within walkable distances of 15 min. or less.