Name: Saudi Arabia's Urban Century
Uploaded: 2025-10-29
Duration: 10 min 1 s

In just over six decades, Saudi Arabia transformed from a predominantly rural society to a Highly urbanized nation, with 85% of the population now living in cities. This reflects a growing global trend by 2050, more than two thirds of all people worldwide will live in urban areas. As entirely new cities rise and existing ones expand at breathtaking speed, Saudi Arabia is laser focused on training and attracting professionals who can bridge urban design with business strategy to encompass the complexities of building and managing a 21st century urban ecosystem. The Chairman of the Saudi Conventions and Exhibitions General Authority, H.E. Fahd Al Rasheed, discusses how this new urbanist thinking is positioning the nation as a laboratory for innovation one that will not only define the future of cities in Saudi Arabia, but offer a bold blueprint for sustainable urban development that the world can follow.

Saudi Arabia's Urban Century

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Your Excellency. Great to see you. Great to see you. I, I have to admit we did not mention Skega, but I have not yet introduced you as urban 2 lead. Can I just, what is Urban 20? And thank you. No, I did not. Well, I know I read your bio, but you've been busy, but, but tell me more about like what, what exactly is that? And Thank you for your support again. No, thank you. It's great to have everybody here. It's uh I know it's a big investment in people's time, so I really appreciate it. Last year I met you in New York City during the Fortune Global Forum there, and now we're here. It's been an amazing journey and you, you planned so much for these, uh, events and then. 2 days it's over, so I don't want to take the presence of any of you for granted. Thank you. But I think, well, yes, thank you. You know, I, I am, I'm, I'm digressing a bit, but we also did the most powerful women summit, and I, I wanna tie it back to the topic that we're talking about because one of the things that really struck me when I spoke to the people there was it was eye opening for them, not the not the amount of development because that's actually something that's gotten a lot of press. I think it was the um the experience of the people they met on the ground, the talent that you would have expected. expected to be more nascent, and let's put it that way. So I feel like that is very much at the heart when we're taking talent and cities together you've got a rich experience and that means talk a little bit about your own thinking as to how you're shaping whether it's urban 20 or some of the other initiatives here around the people who are building the cities. Well, I think the, the experience that I've had with hosting international people in uh in, in Saudi Arabia over the past 20 years has been incredible because when we think about promoting a country or promoting an investment destination, we always think about, well, what can we say? I think more importantly we should talk about what can we show and because cities don't lie. If I say Riad's an amazing city and you come here, your experience from the passport gates all the way to the city and back out. I can't lie about it, so it has to be real. And my experience is when you bring people here, they actually feel it. They can imagine, they can feel the hospitality, hospitality, the optimism, and then meet these incredible women that you showcased at the MPW. These are vice ministers and mysterial level women who have helped shape the country, not for the past 10 years, but actually since the beginning in different ways. You cannot just act like the ladies yesterday in the event, the two opera singers, they didn't learn this in the past 2 years. This has been their livelihood and their lifetime. They we're now just putting them up on stage and celebrating them. And this brings us back to our cities. And I've been working in the city space now for 20 plus years. Um, and our cities deserve a lot more. Can I just ask, what did you glean from those experiences because you've peppered throughout this conference you've mentioned, for example, you know, building cities you've, you've worked, you know, in government, the private set and you've had this opportunity to really sort of go across and develop this skill set. It's different to lead a city, to lead. In the public sector, do public private than it is to be a leader in business. Absolutely. So, um, we invest a lot in our leaders in business, so they, they go to bachelor's degrees, they get MBAs, etc. and they get to, uh, eventually work and lead corporations, but imagine our cities. As a city leader you have to be a politician because you have to convince stakeholders of what needs to happen and what not needs to happen and then you also have to be an executive, so somebody has to clean the streets. So it's a very hands on job of trying to get things done. But finally the level of technical competence required to make decisions. It is unbelievable. You have to be an expert on mobility, sustainability, uh, on energy, on, on building and construction and project management, and on urban economics, and then you have to promote the city. It's a plethora of knowledge and tech and technical capabilities. But we don't train our mayors and city leaders, so you're training mayors. You are training mayors. Well, the Urban 20, which is a civil engagement group under the G20, gets the voice of urban leaders to G20 leaders. Um, we agreed that we need a masters of city administration and that we need to lure lure some of the best talent in the world away from just doing business, the thinking about city urban leadership as a career. And so the MCA now is in talks and we're talking, we've, we've launched it in Johannesburg under the leadership of South Africa. Uh, and, uh, we're working with universities around the world now with 50 mayors plus on doing this, and the response has been amazing. So, uh, we, we think we're gonna need about, um, 200,000 urban leaders in the next 20 years. You know, I want to bring it back to Riyadh for a second because, uh, one thing that strikes me in this world where we're putting up walls, this actually is a place that is going in the opposite direction. It feels very much like a global city pro-globalization in a way what I like about this event and others is the ability to create a village green for people from across the world China, US, etc. Talk about. This as a place for people to develop as leaders as well. How do you want global talent to think about Riyadh? Matthew Bishop is now living here. He just moderated. Yeah, he's a great friend of mine, um. I think Saudi Arabia understands that. You can't build a country on your own. That you need To partner with the world. This has always been the case. Uh, Saudi Aramco was was the California oil company, Standard Oil Company, right? So, so we understood that yes, we have a lot of human resources, we have a lot of resources in the ground and geographically. But how do you do that? How do you build all of this? You have to partner and you have to attract the best talent in the world, not just develop your own. I think over the next 5 years, we need at least 400,000 executives and middle level management in the country. Because we are already non-Saudi, we're already 7% unemployment, so we're hitting that unemployment rate that will, will, will, will drive, um, uh, you know, uh, stability in the in the labor market, and you need all of this knowledge so we cannot do it all on our own. We have to open our doors and bring people in and have and partner with companies and human capital. I'd be remiss not to ask how you found this event, what you've gleaned from it. Well, it's been amazing to host people. I love doing that. I get a lot of energy out of meeting people, meeting peers who would improve our thinking. We are, we have a culture of the Mejlis where we sit and we debate and we talk about everything. Nothing is off, uh, you know, um, nothing that we can discuss and to see people, our peers come from all over the world to have this discussion and get to learn a little bit more, and we of course learned from them has been fantastic. And give us a sense, I know time is ticking down here, but uh, we talk about vision 2030. I'd love to know your vision personally like near term, what are some of your own aspirations for Riyadh, for Saudi Arabia, for the people in this audience, and how they engage with you? Um, I graduated in 1999 from a bachelor's degree. I came here. I had been away from the country for all my life, basically, and I came in with my suitcase and two boxes of books, and Saudi Arabia is the ultimate meritocracy. Uh, I had the chance to build a startup city and then to uh run the capital under the the leadership of the crown prince, run hospitals, build universities. And when we talk about land of opportunity, it's not the land of training, yeah, it's great training ground, and it's not just the land of opportunity for companies and capital. It is a land of opportunity for people and to get that kind of experience, if I was anywhere else, I'll be probably just moving vertically from an analyst to VP to CEO. So here people like me and all of my brothers and sisters, Saudis and our colleagues from around the world get to move across industry, which is fascinating, which means now I'm mid-career. I feel like I'm in my prime and therefore I'm still upgrading my skill sets and I never stopped because I have to, and we learn ultimately from the crown prince. He walks into a meeting talking about a major project, and I'm an urbanist. He can look at the customer experience. He can talk about the IRRs and the investment capital like Goldman Sachs investment banker, and then he has the aesthetic capability to look at buildings and say, Well, where's this architecture from? Why does it look like this? And then we have a great debate. So this is the kind of opportunity that Saudi Arabia now is creating for human capital, the idea of building the future, building it together, and then becoming your best when you do so. I like that we've talked about power. We've talked about so many different resources that we've, it's nice to be able to talk about the power of people and what you've gleaned here and the opportunities for others. Thank you very much. Please join me in thanking His Excellency and look forward to doing more. Thank you so much.