The year 2020 will be the year where Oman has renewed; much of what we call normal has changed this year. A lot has happened, from the pandemic to the change of sultans and, from that, we must consider all aspects of our lives and perhaps even our culture. The city, an environment in which human’s feelings interact with their daily needs and social needs make it perhaps one of the most important enablers of intellectual change. From within this perspective, we had a chance to meet the Minister of Housing and Urban Planning for a discussion about our emerging urban cities and putting forward our ideas and aspirations towards building cities as Omani youth. We believe that these discussions are integral for the growth of communities. So in this article I will be talking about the ideas that were brought up in this discussion by the young Omani youth. 

 

Mixed-use communities  

 

Personal experiences were viewed in the discussion, from how schools are squashed into one neighborhood and how that can cause traffic and congestion to school (we don’t want to be late to school don’t we!) and about the boys playing football with their friends in the middle of the road because where else can these poorboys play? These stories were sad to hear because such simple situations with simple solutions are still faced by many people, why? 

 

Hence, that is why we need mixed-use communities. Reducing the number of cars by creating cities where neighborhoods would have a mix of shops, housing, and public transportation. This will make the use of automobile lower, but, of course, we have to make cities bike-friendly and recognize that streets play a big role in the way we live. Instead, we can implement public transport, “which can bring communities together, the kid can get to know his neighbors and become closer and have conversations”. That so because "we have to focus on the community and being closer to each other and not just building the infrastructure'.

 

But, as we see in the current situation we do have public transport “ but no one uses it, the only ones using it are the one or two workers, a waste! "These buses go to and forth all day long but people aren’t using them”. 

How can we fix this? “Before implementing anything into communities, we have to change their mindsets”. Maybe if people would have different mindsets when thinking about public transport more people would use it. 

 

 

Sustainable urban cities

 

“I think we should talk about sustainable cities before we get in-depth about smart cities”. How can we build sustainable cities? By making our city planning more eco-friendly, considering renewable energy, implementing community gardens and urban agriculture, and most importantly focusing on vegetation. Vegetation is very important, “greenery can bring livelihood into cities” not only that, but it can be a solution for global warming that is causing our planet to become hotter day by day.

 

A question to think about is “are we ready to face natural disasters? Are our cities built for these situations?” Let's take a look at the last couple of months, the global pandemic or the famous “coronavirus”. Were we ready when the pandemic hit? Did we handle the situation well? Are our cities built for such situations?  

 

Colorful houses?

 

As a child, I would always look at our neighborhoods and wonder: why do the houses look the same? Why couldn’t we have more colors in the neighborhoods of Oman? The houses are “copied and paste” as if we have a “catalog with barely three building models”. All the buildings look the same, and unfortunately, no creativity is implemented in the buildings. 

 

Let us now turn to the answer to my childhood questions: “is the ministry not allowing us to choose the color of our houses?”. One of the guests gave her opinion that she thinks “because of the heat in Oman, that light colors are used”. 

 

 

“Send location please”

 

“I don’t know why no one talked about this, but it’s a really important problem we face; it’s the problem of addresses”. Why doesn’t every house have a clear address and not just a bunch of numbers you can't even read? We need addresses where you can just type up in google and it will lead you directly there. For example, you wanted to visit a friend, he will first send you the location and still receive a phone call from you asking for directions “go left on the roundabout and then you turn right after nesto blah blah blah”. No offense, but we all start to sound like a GPS! "we can have names as addresses, just like there are street names we can have building names or house names".

 

Why is this important? When it comes to smart cities this will be very helpful when we start using drones to distribute deliveries to homes or other things that will exist, but we still haven't discovered. Your Talabat driver would understand how to reach your house after explaining to him, but would your drone do so? I don’t think so.

 

The future!

 

But how long would it take us to change and develop our urban cities? 2030? 2040? “remember when they used to say 2020!2020! I don’t see any flying cars or anything like that”, so when planning future goals we should set realistic goals and expectations but work harder to achieve these goals!