Introduction

Historically, Doha was a fishing and pearl diving town. Today, the capital is home to more than 90% of the country’s 2.4 million people, the majority of whom are professionals from all around the globe (QSA 2015). Qatar’s overall population has witnessed an unprecedented increase since 2010. With a current population of 2.4 million, of which only around 15 percent are native Qataris, the peninsula is just 11.571 square kilometers. Up to the mid- 1960s, the majority of Doha’s built environment was composed of traditional houses that represent local responses to the surrounding physical and socio-cultural conditions. During the 1970s, Doha was transformed into a modernized city. However, in the 1980s and early 1990s the development process was slow compared to the prior period due to the overall political atmosphere that resulted from the peaceful process of delegating power to Sh. Hamad Al Thani in 1995. Over the past decade, Qatar has become one of the world’s major producers and exporters of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). The wealth produced by Qatar’s oil and gas exports has generated a construction development boom in the capital, Doha, and the surrounding vicinity. This resulted in significant growth at all levels from urban development and infrastructure provision to cultural and educational facilities (Roberts, 2015). Three fundamental theoretical approaches with associated definitions will be investigated in this section. Defining the term “knowledge economy” and its impact on creating a new paradigm of urbanism is articulated. Then I will give a background on the topic of knowledge-based urban development in an international and regional context.

Post Globalized World: Cities Connecting the World

In the era of globalization, cities are regarded as arenas of accelerating change. Sassen (2001) refers to the four major interrelated functions that cities should perform in their attempts at becoming global. They should become “highly concentrated command points in the organization of the world economy; second, as key locations for finance and for specialized service firms, which have replaced manufacturing as the leading economic sectors; third, as sites of production including production of innovations, in these leading industries; and fourth, as markets for the products and innovations produced” (Sassen, 2001: 3-4). The third function implies the inevitable partial transformation of cities, within its globalization process, into knowledge-generating urban nodes. Castells (1996; 1998) argues that a new type of society is rising in our contemporary cities due to the consequences of the information revolution. Since the late 20th century, world cities have struggled to construct global identities. Castells argues that the global city is not a place but a process. The relational worlds of non-physical, functional, inter-locking networks of knowledge-intensive firms are to be conceptualized as ‘spaces of flows’, while the physical side of localized urban nodes of these same inter-locking networks are to be considered as ‘spaces of places’ (Castells, 1996). From a sociological point of view, Sassen (2001) argues that cities in the information age should be re-perceived as nodes of an immense network of cultural, commercial and political transactions. Given these points of view, it is obvious that the classical planning processes and design guidelines of contemporary cities need a substantial revision.