Spatial Development of Muscat/Oman and Challenges of Public Transport

Abstract

This article focuses on the current situation of urban planning and mobility in Muscat, Oman. It starts by analysing the proposed planned urban development and its present reality by comparing the physical planning framework developed by Weidleplan in 1990 to today’s situation, derived from recent satellite images and open geospatial data. In a second step it analyses the different modes of transport by user surveys conducted in 2016. As conclusion the article proposes ideas for improvements in urban planning and mobility taking two case studies as examples for detailed studies. The article gives in-depth background information about the legal and administrative framework surrounding the land planning and development. It highlights the issues that are caused by the combination of the natural limitations of the city and the current practices of spatial development. Muscat serves as case study since it is rather a small ordinary city which cannot be compared with Dubai, Abu Dhabi or others following a hyper urbanisation trend. It rather stands for the secondary cities in the Gulf Region and can serve as example for them.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.