Because global developments are shaped there, every political writer is inevitably tempted to focus on the Davos Forum in Switzerland. Instead of the most significant global event of the year, I would like to write about a stroll along Prince Mohammed bin Salman Road in Riyadh: the road and the method, intersection rather than rupture. Is this choice justified? Is reading cities through their streets and their people useful for developing alternative conceptions of societies, as I argued in my book “Urbanism and Politics?” Can such conceptions render a street in a city more important than a global forum?
The forum is important, no doubt about it, but it is a fleeting annual global moment. This road, which stretches from Diriyah (with all the roots of statehood and foundations it symbolizes) to the heart of Riyadh, reflects deeper shifts that go beyond urbanism. It is an embodiment of the political and social progress of a state that enjoys growing global influence. It is not an event but a trajectory, not a temporary project but the manifestation of a philosophy of governance that is gradually taking shape, along with foreign and domestic policies that are as apparent as this road itself. The forum is merely one stop along this road. Has the Kingdom not hosted “Davos in the Desert”?
In 1997, I visited Riyadh for the first time, for my research on the Kingdom and its political and social evolution. I conducted interviews with Saudis in their homes. This was not a cultural choice but a social necessity. Homes were the space where ideas, questions, and apprehensions about change were discussed. It was not that people lacked opinions but that the public sphere itself had not yet been born.
Nearly three decades later, I interviewed people in cafes and on sidewalks, and none of them whispered or hesitated. This shift tells us more in itself than any economic indicator or international report. It reflects the shift from a society in which ideas were managed behind closed doors to a society in which ideas are discussed in the public sphere; from the policies of closed homes to policies of open streets. Accordingly, the road constitutes an essential entry point for understanding what has taken place.
Riyadh is a city that cannot be understood from above, through maps and decisions. It is best read from below, through the feet stepping on its streets and recreating the city. Mohammed bin Salman Road, at its heart, is not merely an engineering route but a cultural symbol. It is part of the network of symbols that represent the change that has unfolded in Riyadh, which has not only seen its urban infrastructure modernized. Its governance philosophy has changed: from managing stillness to managing movement and consciously meeting history.
For over half a century, Riyadh’s streets were corridors rather than public spaces, and walking was not typical. Today, as you walk along Mohammed bin Salman Road, you feel that the matter goes beyond the name of a street. The road intersects with Riyadh’s main arteries: King Khalid Road, Prince Turki I Road, King Fahd Road, Olaya, King Abdulaziz Road, Janadriyah Road, and King Salman Road. That is not an engineering detail; it speaks volumes. It signals that the new road is underpinned by layers of the Saudi state itself, that the path of the present intersects with the paths of past kings, from the founder Abdulaziz to those who followed.
The road also intersects with Abu Bakr Road and Uthman Road, another powerful symbol: religion remains the glue, or the cement, that of social cohesion as society evolves without losing the substance that binds it together. Modernization is grounded in religion as an ethical and social reference, not a restriction. Olaya Street is also imbued with deep symbolism, representing the middle class’s role in the process and shaping change.
The road, here, is a political narrative. It does not rupture with the past but connects the past to the present. The road that bears the name of Mohammed bin Salman intersects with the roads named after the kings who built the state. The message is clear: change does not erase history but presents a new conception of history and fuels a new vision. The road is a space and the method is a philosophy.
A Saudi woman in her mid-thirties I spoke to at a cafe told me something that sums up what is happening: “Mohammed bin Salman is one of us.” It was not a sentimental remark but the key to understanding the present. The man was not inserted into the Saudi social experience from the outside; he lived through the restrictions and grew up in Riyadh, and he was educated in its schools and universities. That is why change was not a necessity for society alone, but a personal need as well.
He could have opened his personal horizons and left society as it was. Change was not imposed upon him; but he chose it because change here was not a political luxury, but a requirement for durable stability.
Walking along Mohammed bin Salman Road reveals these transformations more vividly than any speech could. Its sidewalks, open spaces, and cafes, as well as the way women, families, and young people walk, their body language, all are signs of a city that has regained confidence. The new state does not assume that life is a threat; it sees life’s suppression as a threat.
Many modernization projects in the Middle East failed because they saw society as an obstacle. What distinguishes the current Saudi experience is that change has come from within, and that it was not a rupture with history but as a conscious intersection with it.
The question has changed. It is no longer: how can we prevent something? But rather: How do we do something? Stillness is no longer a virtue; movement is the virtue now. From this perspective, Mohammed bin Salman Road is more than a street; it is a physical manifesto that expresses the new spirit of Saudi Arabia: managing movement, not stillness.
