User-Initiated Transformations of Public Housing

Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2011 in the subject Urban and Regional Planning, grade: A, Heriot-Watt-University Edinburgh (School of Built Environment), course: Masters of Urban and Regional Planning, language: English, abstract: This study addresses the issue of the residents' modifications to their homes in a government housing project in Saudi Arabia. It also identifies the reasons for these modifications and the subsequent effects of such changes.The study has used the King Fahd housing project as case study, examining the development of public housing in Saudi Arabia and whether the housing took the needs of the new residents into account. It tried to verify whether the project had achieved its purpose after the residents had moved in.The study has reviewed the laws and regulations for housing in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and then collected the information through a field survey, visual survey and personal interviews, then analysed all the data collected by the logic and the SPSS programme in order to extract results.Recommendations were made based on the results to address some the problems identified and to prevent additional problems arisen the future.