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Would Madinah Become Saudi Arabia’s ‘City of Lights’?

The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
    Riyadh - Ghazi al-Harithi
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Would Madinah Become Saudi Arabia’s ‘City of Lights’?

The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images
The Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images

Since the second half of the 19th century, Paris’ inhabitants and visitors have known it as the city of lights (La Ville Lumière). Some historians suggest the name was given to the French capital because it was a hub for culture and intellect during the Age of Enlightenment, and its early adoption of a street light system after Napoleon’s demolition of Middle Ages’ neighborhoods and routes to make a modern city with advanced lighting.

Today, one century later, would Al Madinah Al Munawwarah in Saudi Arabia become this era’s city of lights?

This question is becoming more and more valid after Al Madinah Region Development Authority (MMDA) approved an inclusive study to upgrade and renew lightning with the help of global experiences and expertise in creative lighting solutions. The study has been conducted upon the directives of Madinah Governor and MMDA Chair Prince Faisal bin Salman bin Abdulaziz.

The Start with the surrounding of The Prophet’s Mosque

The first phase of the study is supposed to target the surrounding of The Prophet’s Mosque and expand gradually to include all the vital landmarks and sites in Madinah. It aims at creating a unique identity that suits the identity of Al Madinah Al Munawwarah, as well as offering inhabitants and visitors new, inspiring visual experiences that meet the Quality of Life Programs and promote more opportunities in tourism, trade, and investment in the region.

Religious significance of Madinah

Eng. Fahad Albuliheshi, MMDA chief executive, said the foundations of the study project to renew and upgrade the lighting identity of Madinah, takes into consideration “its religious significance for Muslims, and highlights the interest the government gives to the two holy cities and mosques.”

The relative feature and unique, urban architecture of Madinah “makes it a priority to renew and upgrade the lighting in the city with development and enhancement plans that benefit from global experiences and expertise in the lighting solution sector to help improve the inhabitants’ life quality and enrich the experience of people visiting the city of the Prophet (Pbuh). These plans come as part of the programs dedicated to serving visitors and promoting the system of service and public facilities in the city,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Model studies to shed light on Madinah’s landmarks

When asked about the project and its role in highlighting the city’s landmarks, Albuliheshi said that “we decided to benefit from previous expertise in architectural lighting to achieve model studies that highlight the landmarks of Madinah and improve the urban and visual landscape, enhance the major elements in the historic buildings and sites, benefit from visual effects to enhance serenity and inner peace for visitors in the pedestrian lanes, limit the annoying impact of random lighting, in addition to all the social benefits that modern lighting could bring to the city.”

Lightning quality that “boost environmental sustainability”

Because unique models require critical efforts that focus on results and enhance sustainability, MMDA chief executive assured that “the initiative will consider the right and wise distribution of lights, and the quality of lighting that suit the consumption demands. The plan will also focus on energy consumption rationalization in a way that enhances environmental sustainability, improve the quality of lighting elements and towers for less maintenance and cost, and finally highlights the importance of the city’s landmarks and sites including those related to the Prophet and his journey.”

Life after sunset doesn’t stop

“The social and economic life becomes much better with good lighting that maintains public safety and encourages people to meet in public places and routes in a healthy way,” Howayda Al-Harithy, a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) told Asharq Al-Awsat.

She said that “the first phase will be short and will focus on the central area, then, we will move to the second, larger phase.” Harithy expected the project “to be unique and pioneering in Saudi Arabia and the region,” noting that “it’s going to be an inclusive study project that benefits from high-end technologies and represents a new model for all the Saudi regions and cities.”

As an engineer and architect, Harithy stressed that lighting plays a major role in building and empowering the spatial memory, mainly in cities, and called for benefitting from “advanced technology whether alternative energy resources or smart lighting systems that control the power and colors of the light as well as energy distribution.”

Befitting from global expertise

Professor Howayda Al-Harithy revealed that the MMDA has been assessing lighting models from several countries and cities around the world, and has contacted MIT Professor Carlo Ratti specializing in city lighting and manager of many successful projects in Italy and the United States to benefit from his large expertise in this field and his MIT-based lab in Cambridge.

It’s worth mentioning that the Madinah Regional Municipality had already renewed the lighting systems several times in the city of 1.2 million inhabitants, by restoring lights on streets and neighborhoods using LED technology in order to rationalize electric consumption, avoid carbon emissions, and unify visual identity.

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In a Hotter Future, What Comes After Coral Reefs Die? 

This underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometers (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. (AFP)
This underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometers (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. (AFP)
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In a Hotter Future, What Comes After Coral Reefs Die? 

This underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometers (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. (AFP)
This underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometers (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. (AFP)

The fate of coral reefs has been written with a degree of certainty rare in climate science: at 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, most are expected to die.

This is not a far-off scenario. Scientists predict that the rise of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) will be reached within a decade and that beyond that point, many coral simply cannot survive.

It is important to accept this and ask what next "rather than trying to hold onto the past," said David Obura, chair of IPBES, the UN's expert scientific panel on biodiversity.

"I wish it were different," Obura, a Kenyan reef scientist and founding director of CORDIO East Africa, a marine research organization, told AFP.

"We need to be pragmatic about it and ask those questions, and face up to what the likely future will be."

And yet, it is a subject few marine scientists care to dwell on.

"We are having a hard time imagining that all coral reefs really could die off," said Melanie McField, a Caribbean reef expert, who described a "sort of pre-traumatic stress syndrome" among her colleagues.

"But it is likely in the two-degree world we are rapidly accelerating to," McField, founding director of the Healthy Reefs for Healthy People Initiative, told AFP.

When stressed in hotter ocean waters, corals expel the microscopic algae that provides their characteristic color and food source. Without respite, bleached corals slowly starve.

At 1.5C of warming relative to pre-industrial times, between 70 and 90 percent of coral reefs are expected to perish, according to the IPCC, the global authority on climate science.

At 2C, that number rises to 99 percent.

Even with warming as it stands today -- about 1.4C -- mass coral death is occurring, and many scientists believe the global collapse of tropical reefs may already be underway.

- What comes next -

Obura said it was not pessimistic to imagine a world without coral reefs, but an urgent question that scientists were "only just starting to grapple with".

"I see no reason to not be clear about where we are at this point in time," Obura said. "Let's be honest about that, and deal with the consequences."

Rather than disappear completely, coral reefs as they exist today will likely evolve into something very different, marine scientists on four continents told AFP.

This would happen as slow-growing hard corals -- the primary reef builders that underpin the ecosystem -- die off, leaving behind white skeletons without living tissue.

Gradually, these would be covered by algae and colonized by simpler organisms better able to withstand hotter oceans, like sponges, mussels, and weedy soft corals like sea fans.

"There will be less winners than there are losers," said Tom Dallison, a marine scientist and strategic advisor to the International Coral Reef Initiative.

These species would dominate this new underwater world. The dead coral beneath -- weakened by ocean acidification, and buffeted by waves and storms -- would erode over time into rubble.

"They will still exist, but they will just look very different. It is our responsibility to ensure the services they provide, and those that depend on them, are protected," Dallison said.

- Dark horizon -

One quarter of all ocean species live among the world's corals.

Smaller, sparser, less biodiverse reefs simply means fewer fish and other marine life.

The collapse of reefs threatens in particular the estimated one billion people who rely on them for food, tourism income, and protection from coastal erosion and storms.

But if protected and managed properly, these post-coral reefs could still be healthy, productive, attractive ecosystems that provide some economic benefit, said Obura.

So far, the picture is fuzzy -- research into this future has been very limited.

Stretched resources have been prioritized for protecting coral and exploring novel ways to make reefs more climate resilient.

But climate change is not the only thing threatening corals.

Tackling pollution, harmful subsidies, overfishing and other drivers of coral demise would give "the remaining places the best possible chance of making it through whatever eventual warming we have," Obura said.

Conservation and restoration efforts were "absolutely essential" but alone were like "pushing a really heavy ball up a hill, and that hill is getting steeper," he added.

Trying to save coral reefs "is going to be extremely difficult" as long as we keep pouring carbon into the atmosphere, said Jean-Pierre Gattuso, an oceans expert from France's flagship scientific research institute, CNRS.

But some coral had developed a level of thermal tolerance, he said, and research into restoring small reef areas with these resilient strains held promise.

"How do we work in this space when you have this sort of big dark event on the horizon? It's to make that dark event a little brighter," said Dallison.