Over the weekend I went to the Modern Architecture Kuwait conference and attended a talk by Prof. Alberico B. Belgiojoso titled “The 1970 Vision for Kuwait City”. It was a pretty interesting talk and made me realize how young Kuwait City was.
Prof. Alberico worked with the architectural firm BBPR back in the 60s on various proposals on how to bring Kuwait City into the modern era, into the city you see today. One of the interesting things he discussed was how the original master plan of the city, they proposed to build all these parking structures around the city included underground and overground passageways, shaded paths and even monorails that would connect parking structures to main areas and buildings. I’d imagine if we had any of those today, less people would be inclined to park illegally just to avoid walking long distances in the summer months.
Prof. Alberico also shared the visual above on their proposal for Safat Square which looks a lot more accessible and visible compared to how the square looks today. I kinda wish someone would revisit the old plans for Kuwait and implement some of the cooler ideas from them.
5 replies on “Where are our monorails?”
The history of urban planning Kuwait City can be summed up as “shoulda, woulda, coulda”
My late father was head of the Planning Board in the 1970s and his frustrations with the short sightedness of our government were well documented.
For one example (among many) he recommended AGAINST building the cursed Ministries Complex in the heart of the city because of what it would do to traffic. He advocated building it outside the city in the (then) empty area of West Mishref, with access from many roads to ease congestion and avoid bottlenecks… but alas it was not to be.
He resigned and went on to better things
would be really interested to know more of those stories if you can to share or know where i can learn more
Some fish didn’t get it’s share of the pie, so it did not happen.
Very interesting post .. thank you.
Is there a video of this talk online? I would very much be interested in watching it if possible.