Due to the desire to upgrade the standards of Jeddah in order to serve the Jeddah community and to maintain a higher living standard for its citizens, the Ministry of Municipality and Rural Affairs established the need to establish an urban observatory in Jeddah. Hence, the Jeddah Municipality (the Amana of Jeddah) launched the Jeddah Urban Observatory (JUO) in July 2006 appointing Dr. Mohammed I. Abdulsalam as its first Director.

       The higher council for the observatory is headed by the His Royal Highness Prince Khalid Al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, Governor of Makkah Province and managed by the Amana of Jeddah under close direction of Jeddah?s Mayor, H.E. Eng. Adel Fakeih.

       The JUO will also garner input and participation from various governmental departments as well as the private sector. In addition, it will utilize a geographical information system (GIS) that provides and manages an information base as well as produces urban indicators. The potential operation of the observatory will involve not only the executors and stakeholders but also the local public in its development plans. This way, the people of our beautiful Red port city will have a direct input in its development.

       This website will provide points of information, resources, and opinions related to several elements of the JUO. It is particularly intended to be useful to the community and may be of use and interest to others as well as a source of information that will enable readers to become acquainted with the urban observatory and its operations.

       We greatly welcome your suggestions and will spare no effort to make this site more useful, please contact us.

       An urban observatory is a "specialized center" that assumes the form of a specialized technical department established in the core of the organizational framework of the city's administration. This technical department is charged with the process of collecting and analyzing data, statistics as well as information in different areas of urban development. Furthermore, it works on operating these data and information to go with the requirements of measurement, comparison, publication and retrieval from different areas of city development. All these are done to improve the life conditions of city dwellers. In other words this technical division works on transferring information into a set of indicators that will aid decision makers responsible for urban development in setting up policies and making plans to fulfill the objective intended from this development of the city and its dwellers, whether it is structural, economic, social or environmental i.e. a lasting and comprehensive urban development.

       The urban observatory is considered a good tool in the hands of decision makers. It is only through indicators that they can detect the improvement or deterioration of the conditions in a city, as well as compare it, whether according to time span or between cities experiencing the same level of development .
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