Potentials and Limitations of CyberspaceWeb–based Interactions on City Development: A Survey ofKey Urban Actors in Selected Saudi Arabian Cites

For centuries city development has been shaped by the

cumulative activities of individual’s social groups, firms

and various types of institutions using place-based faceto-

face interactions. The recent convergence of many

information technologies has led to the emergence of an

alternative cyberspace-based means of interactions. This

paper seeks to explore the potentials and limits of this

alternative means as it is applied in the Saudi cities. Based

on websites survey of the key urban actors in selected

Saudi Arabian cities, the paper explores the extent to

which the city’s residents, firms and institutions use the

cyberspace to undertake activities that were previously

carried out only by means of place-based face-to-face

interactions.

This paper discusses, documents and analyzes websites'

contents of a sample of urban actors so as to identify the

activities that can be carried out through cyberspace, and

finally it assesses the implications of web-based

interactions on physical development of Saudi cities. The

study confirms that websites activities tend to influence

urban physical development through resource utilization

which may have an effect on land uses and some urban

activities.

development, Saudi Arabian cities, Islamic cities.