Tourist Attraction/Kingdom Tower – Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal announced plans to build the Kingdom Tower, world’s tallest building in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, less than two years after the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai at a height that many thought wouldn’t be surpassed for years.
The planned tower will be 1km tall (3,281 feet) when it is completed and consist of hotels, offices, luxury apartments and a shopping centre. Prince Alwaleed said his company, Kingdom Holding Co., had signed a $1.23 billion deal with Bin Laden Group to build the tower, which is expected to take more than five years to complete. Building this tower in Jeddah sends a financial and economic message that should not be ignored, Prince Alwaleed told. It has a political depth to it to tell the world that we Saudis invest in our country despite what is happening around us from events, turmoil and revolutions even.

With a total construction area of over 500,000 square meters, the soaring Kingdom Tower will be a mixed-use building featuring a Four Seasons hotel, Four Seasons service apartments, first class office space, luxury condominiums and an observatory that will be higher than the world’s current highest observation deck.
US company Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture has been employed to design and oversee development of the project. The sprawling mega project, first announced in 2008, will cover two square miles at its base. Originally, the intention was to build the tower a mile high – a feat that would mean a 12-minute journey in a lift to get to the top – but there were fears that the soil would not support its foundations. It is not 1,000 meters. It is more, could be more by many meters… The figure is secret, only a small number of people know, said Prince Alwaleed.

The great height of Kingdom Tower necessitates one of the world’s most sophisticated elevator systems. The Kingdom Tower complex will contain 59 elevators, including 54 single-deck and five double-deck elevators, along with 12 escalators. Elevators serving the observatory will travel at a rate of 10 meters per second in both directions. Another unique feature of the design is a sky terrace, roughly 30 meters (98 feet) in diameter, at level 157. It is an outdoor amenity space intended for use by the penthouse floor.

Kingdom Tower will be the centerpiece and the first construction phase of Kingdom City, Jeddah Economic Company’s (JEC) new urban development of more than 5.3 million square meters of land in the north of Jeddah, overlooking the Red Sea and Obhur Creek. The overall construction cost of the tower is $1.2 billion and the overall estimated cost of the entire Kingdom City project is anticipated to be $20 billion. This project will provide sustainable profits to Kingdom Holding shareholders, Prince Alwaleed said.
Prince Alwaleed, who owns 95% of Kingdom Holding, has focused his investments on banks, hotels and media companies, building sizable stakes in firms such as Citigroup Inc., News Corp., Apple Inc. and Time Warner Inc. News Corp. owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

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Women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to vote

(CNN) -- Women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to vote and run for office in future municipal elections, King Abdullah announced Sunday.

In an address on Saudi state TV, the king said women will be allowed to nominate candidates for the next set of municipal elections. Although he did not use the word "vote," allowing women to take part in the nomination process would amount to voting within Saudi Arabia's system.

The country is holding municipal elections Thursday for the only the second time in nearly 50 years. The changes the king announced would go into effect for the next set of elections -- and it is unclear when those might take place.

Saudi women's rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider called the announcement "great news."

"Women's voices will be heard finally," she said. "Now it's time to remove other barriers like not allowing women to drive cars and not being able to function and live a normal life without a male guardian."

The White House also hailed the announcement.

"We welcome Saudi King Abdullah's announcement today that women will serve as full members of the Shura Council in the next session, and will have the right to participate in future elections," it said in a statement. "These reforms recognize the significant contributions women in Saudi Arabia make to their society and will offer them new ways to participate in the decisions that affect their lives and communities." The move, according to the White House, is "an important step forward in expanding the rights of women in Saudi Arabia."

King Abdullah's announcement followed increasing pressure on Saudi Arabia to allow women to vote.

"Since we reject to marginalize the role of women in the Saudi society, in every field of works, according to the (Islamic) Sharia guidelines, and after consultations with many of our scholars, especially those in the senior scholars council, and others, who have expressed the preference for this orientation, and supported this trend, we have decided the following," the king said, according to an English translation of his remarks released by the Saudi government.

First, he announced, women will be allowed to participate in the Shura council, the Consultative Council appointed by the king.

The U.S. State Department says there are already some women on the 150-member Consultative Council. In 2010, "the number of female advisers on the Consultative Council increased from 10 to 13," the U.S. State Department said in its human rights report on Saudi Arabia, citing "local sources."

The king also announced Sunday that, "As of the next session, women will have the right to nominate themselves for membership of Municipal Councils, and also have the right to participate in the nomination of candidates with the Islamic guidelines."

Elections for those councils were held in 2005 for the first time since 1963. Only men were eligible to vote, the U.S. State Department says.

Another set of elections was scheduled for 2009 but was delayed repeatedly -- ultimately being scheduled for this week.

Earlier this year, Saudi women activists wrote the government requesting that women be allowed to vote and be candidates in the municipal elections, according to the U.S. Library of Congress.

Saudi Arabia's "Minister of Municipality and Rural Affairs declared that Saudi women will not be able to either run or vote in this election," the Library of Congress reported on its blog. "According to news reports, the Minister stated that the ban on women's participation is due to the lack of segregated voting facilities."

When election centers opened in April for voters to register, some groups of women turned up and were turned away. It was one of the first public acts of the "Saudi Women Revolution," a movement set up to campaign for the end of Saudi Arabia's discriminatory laws.

In June, a number of Saudi women took to the streets -- in cars -- to demand the right for women to drive and travel freely in the country.

There are no specific traffic laws that make it illegal for women to drive in Saudi Arabia. However, religious edicts are often interpreted as a prohibition of female drivers. Such edicts also prevent women from opening bank accounts, obtaining passports or even going to school without the presence of a male guardian.

Authorities stopped Manal al Sharif, 32, for driving a car May 21 and detained her the next day. She said she was forced to sign a form promising not to drive again and spent a week in jail. Her case became a rallying cry for women activists.

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