The Kingdom hosts the first workshop on national urban observatories, in an effort to activate joint Gulf cooperation.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hosted – via video conferencing – a workshop under the umbrella of the General Secretariat of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf entitled “Gulf Urban Monitoring”, in order to learn about the experiences of the member states of the Council in this field, and as an extension of the work of the urban strategy of the Cooperation Council countries.

The workshop aims to highlight the role of the National Urban Observatory in activating urban monitoring processes at all levels, to provide information, data and urban indicators and present them to decision-makers and urban and development policymakers to support them in taking the necessary measures to guide urban development, in addition to organizing the work of local urban observatories.

The workshop was held under the supervision of the Municipalities and Housing Department of the Human and Environmental Affairs Sector at the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council, where specialists at the National Urban Observatory reviewed the Kingdom’s experience in this field. They provided an overview of the Observatory’s tasks, objectives, and what has been achieved in terms of goals during the past period. Discussion was opened with the workshop participants to benefit from their experiences in the fields of urban monitoring, and to come up with general recommendations to improve and develop urban monitoring processes at the level of all the Gulf Cooperation Council countries .

The workshop concluded with several recommendations and proposals, the most important of which was the preparation of the Gulf Urban Monitoring Report, which aims to achieve integration and cooperation between urban observatories in the GCC countries, in addition to the possibility of electronic linking between the GCC countries’ platforms that support the urban monitoring process, and working to activate the proposal to establish a Gulf urban observatory. The participants also recommended holding periodic meetings to exchange experiences between specialists in the GCC countries, given the importance of this in enriching the experiences of urban observatories in the GCC countries.

It is worth noting that this workshop came as a result of the outcomes of the thirty-ninth meeting of the Coordination and Follow-up Committee in the field of municipal work in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, held last April. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had taken the initiative to welcome the holding of the first workshop in the field of urban monitoring to review the experience of the National Urban Observatory, which was established to be the main reference for urban monitoring operations, and to provide technical support to local urban observatories in various Saudi regions and cities .