Word: saudis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...moviegoers to see Lions for Lambs, In the Valley of Elah or Rendition; viewers figured the films were a cross between a harangue and homework. Not many more people came when producers tried crossbreeding hot-spot intrigue with familiar genres. The Kingdom, a Jamie Foxx action picture set in Saudi Arabia, and Charlie Wilson's War, with Tom Hanks in an upbeat comedy about Afghanistan, earned the stars some of their lowest box-office numbers in years. Americans, urged by their President to defeat the terrorists by going shopping, apparently didn't put tickets to war-on-terrorism movies...
...Dabbagh and his backers insist they're not trying to out-build Dubai, or anybody else, and that the new cities are meant to solve pressing economic and demographic problems: Saudi Arabia has a massive housing scarcity and a huge population of young people that will come of age in the next five years. Fahd al-Rasheed, CEO of the KAEC project, points out that Saudi Arabia needs to build 6 million residential units in the next 12 years; and that's compared to the 5 million units it has built over the past six decades. In addition to providing...
...build the new homes and create the new jobs in Riyadh, Jeddah and Damman? Saudi officials say these cities have already grown too fast, and in too haphazard a fashion - the population of the capital alone has doubled in a decade, to 4 million. Building new cities will prevent uncontrolled urban sprawl and congestion. "We just need these new cities," says Khaled al-Faisal, governor of the Mecca region. "There is no other...
...Faisal points out that Saudi Arabia has done this before: The port towns of Jubail and Yanbu were built from scratch in the 1980s and '90s. But those were essentially designed to create industrial infrastructure, and little attention was given to the quality of life of those who had to move there. As a result, both cities have come to be seen as somewhat dreary outposts, better suited for workers living in dormitories than families...
...this is not meant to be a tourist destination. Each of the new cities will specialize in specific industrial sectors, where foreign and Saudi businesses are being encouraged to build factories and offices. KAEC's speciality will be plastics - in the masterplan, a large swath of the city is designated "Plastics Valley". There will also be a $6 billion aluminum complex and a container depot. The UAE aluminum maker Dubal has already signed up as one of the "anchor" industries. Chocolate maker Mars will be another. The city's planners hope KAEC will eventually create 40,000 industrial jobs...