On Riyadh’s King Abdulaziz Road, construction workers sweep sand off a brand-new sidewalk. A gardener pops a spindly plant out of a plastic pot and gives it a new home in the ground, smoothing the soft red earth with his hands.
Behind them, 15-foot-high banners advertise the future gardens and canals of King Salman Park, a plan to turn an air base in Saudi Arabia’s desert capital into a public green space four times bigger than Central Park in New York.
Saudis have gotten used to breakneck change over the past five years under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whether it’s the shock therapy to turn the kingdom into a post-oil economy, a high-tech city from scratch on the Red Sea or the loosening up of society that allows men and women to mix more freely. But among the most ambitious plans is to transform Riyadh — one of the world’s most sprawling, car-dependent and water-poor cities — into a paragon of sustainability.
That means spending tens of billions of dollars of oil revenue on re-engineering life for the city’s 8 million residents, adding sidewalks, public transportation, electric vehicles, neighborhood parks and millions of trees.
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