Menoret’s many drives through Riyadh neighborhoods allow him to introduce one of the other primary concerns of his book: the interplay of urban planning and political control, and the effects of suburbanization in particular. He describes the arrival of a powerful American oil company, which would come to be known as Aramco, in the 1930s. A few years after its first contract with the King, Aramco began constructing “California-style suburbs” for its American personnel in the Eastern Province, relegating “coolies”—Saudi laborers—to segregated, subpar living conditions.

The poor treatment of Saudi workers sparked numerous uprisings in the 1940s and 1950s, including strikes and a bus boycott, all of which were brutally suppressed. Rather than listen to the demands of workers, Saudi authorities deferred to Aramco’s housing model, building even more grid-like subdivisions that were “easy to police.” The municipality of Riyadh began as early as the 1940s to build subdivisions that mimicked “Aramco’s Levittown” in the east.

But Saudi oil infrastructure continued to fuel uneven development, and growing tensions over inequitable working conditions fomented further demonstrations, strikes, and boycotts. Alarmed, the Saudi government doubled down on city planning, commissioning European planners to help tame the growing urban population. Chief among these consultants was the Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis, who touted a vision of superblocks and main streets that would “shield” residents from “toxic political ideas.”