Stephie Pfenninger, Sandra Schilling-Gehrig

When Sultan Qaboos ibn Said came to power he was confronted with a virtual tabula rasa situation as far as urban development goes. Since then he has systematically developed the countries infrastructure: streets, electricity, water provision, schools, hospitals, parks. As a consequence of this modernization of the country, but also of the increase in population, the housing needs of Oman have also been changing. The current government policy is that each Omani family?to have its own home. The Sultan’s will has been formulated in the ‘Land Allotment’ act, a decree by which every Omani is entitled to a piece of land for building a single family house of a certain size, and in the district to which they are legally registered. As a consequence parts of the countryside are being ‘urbanized’ without a local economy, with city commuters working in Muscat or other urban areas and building their new estates back in their village. In general, this is one of the most consequential contemporary urban strategies of the state, a major energy in physical transformation of the landscape. It is an enormous but very quiet process of territorial ‘colonization’; zoning, assigning and developing large areas with little means and in short time.

This chapter has been formulated as the investigatory part of the master thesis of the authors. In the following semester the investigation and analysis will deepen and a design proposal will be presented.