KAND SmartEcoCity

The 92km2 site is located on the Red Sea coast north of Jazan City close to the new airport. MYAA was appointed to provide a strategic masterplan for the site including transport and infrastructure planning. Key natural feature of the site are mangroves and wetlands located among the coast. The aim was to create a new city suburb for over 500,000 residents to support eco-tourism, hospitality and service industries whilst preserving the mangroves as part of a nature reserve. The scheme provides 70,000 new homes requiring major infrastructure.

The key project challenge was to manage the opposing interest to create large scale development whilst simultaneously balancing the needs of the mangroves. This was achieved by creating a mangrove nature reserve using detailed bathymetry and marine engineering to maintain saline waterflow.