Post oil and gas future urban sustainability and relevance of a compact urban form for Doha

After the discovery of oil-gas in Qatar, in the past few decades, Doha, its capital has dramatically grown from being a small fishing and pearling town to an international city with diversified economy. At the same time, it transformed from a small, compact, high-density and walkable traditional Arabic town of 1960s into an expansive car-dependent city with low-density sprawl all around. Since the 1970s, a radio-concentric urban form expanded out of the old core following the ‘A’ and ‘B’ ring roads and thereafter, expanded out rapidly following the ring roads constructed one after another, ‘G’ being the most recent and is also constantly expanding out along the newly added urban highways and mammoth expressways. Qatar’s population of 250k in 1981 grew to 2.4 million in 2015 and its lion’s share, i.e. around 2 million reside in the designated ‘Metropolitan Doha’ falling in Doha, and four more adjoining municipalities covering an area of around 1313sqkm with a gross density of merely 15pph. If the large number of contract-labourers staying in the labour camps is excluded, density would fall further. Very high car-dependency with more than 900k passenger cars on roads (2020) and the policy of adopting ‘car-priority designs’ or ‘highway design standards’ on roads are rapidly diluting the ‘concept of place’, disconnecting the communities, reducing walkability in the urban centres and in the neighbourhoods and contributing not only to carbon emission, but also affecting public health. Moreover, at the same time, car-dependent low-density suburban expansion consequentially is increasing infrastructure investments and maintenance costs demanded by the ever-expanding infrastructure networks, which remain as ‘over-provisions’ disproportionate to the population density. Future consequences of such a pattern of development are to be detrimental to ‘environmental and economic sustainability’ and to be deterrent to development of a compact resilient city with cohesive communities. This paper is firstly re-evaluating Doha’s urban morphological dynamics through a comparative assessment of selected compact and high-density cities around the world. It is secondly attempting to investigate viability of an appropriate possible compact urban form along with identification of appropriate spatial, population and density strategies those would facilitate such a form. Such a compact form should ensure Doha’s future urban sustainability, resilience and liveability during the post oil-gas era by minimizing use of personal cars, optimizing and minimizing infrastructure investments and maintenance costs, opening up new dimensions in place-making and sustainable transportation and by strengthening the communities.