Riyadh’s rapid population growth and heavy reliance on roads to move people and goods have put pressure on Riyadh’s road network. In response, the authorities commissioned several infrastructure improvements involving the construction of ring roads, tunnels and bridges. While some roads are still congested, road safety, connectivity and journey times are being enhanced, and are clearly appreciated.

Interestingly, 46% report an improvement in rail/subway service (versus 11% of the opposite opinion). This is despite Riyadh Metro not yet being complete. Given that 66% of citizens surveyed are confident their city government makes the right decisions about which large-scale infrastructure investments to fund, and the highly visible Riyadh Metro project, our view is that citizens are upbeat about the progress being made with the city-wide metro network and confident it will benefit them.

In terms of utilities, 44% of citizens surveyed reported an improvement in the electricity infrastructure (versus 24% who feel it has worsened) and 50% described the water provision as better than 12 months ago (versus 15% who feel it has worsened). Apart from Mumbai, the satisfaction levels of Riyadh citizens for its water and power infrastructure outrank the other cities surveyed.

The Riyadh authorities are well ahead of their counterparts in all but one of the cities surveyed regarding making it easy for citizens to respond through mobile channels (apps, SMS).

On average, Riyadh citizens have had 1.6 opportunities over the last year to provide feedback to a public transportation provider. Slightly above average (1.2) for the cities surveyed, the Riyadh figure (1.6) is double that of Singapore and Sydney (0.8).

Some 48% of citizens agree that the public authorities communicate clearly how citizens can submit feedback on infrastructure issues, 15% disagree. However, only 14% of citizens feel that feedback requests come at the appropriate time in the planning stage to be meaningful. While this feeling reflects other cities’ findings, Riyadh fares the worst.

Riyadh respondents, however, did have more opportunities than most of the other cities’ citizens to provide feedback on public infrastructure issues over the last year. The top four issues for feedback were billing and payments, price of services, use of new technologies, and methods of communication with customers. Unfortunately, these don’t correlate with the top three infrastructure improvements that citizens would like to see — upgrading of utilities, upgrading of public transportation and improving environmental sustainability (e.g. recycling, solar power).

In terms of which technologies will have the biggest impact on their quality of life, Riyadh citizens share very similar opinions to those of the other cities surveyed. Solar power, fast rail connections to the airport and fiber-optic broadband all appear in the top three technologies in varying orders of priority for Riyadh, Mumbai, Sydney, London, Los Angeles and New York.

Sharing personal data is an activity that most people universally are reluctant to do. In Riyadh, however, only 23% of citizens would be unhappy to share their personal data with relevant city agencies to help them improve city infrastructure or public services. This suggests great confidence among Riyadh citizens in their city’s authorities to protect their data, as well as a desire to contribute to infrastructure improvements.

Flooding is Riyadh’s main natural disaster threat. The city’s rapid urbanization, population growth, lack of natural drainage outlets and impervious road surfaces have led to flash flooding — causing significant damage and disruption as well as loss of life. New dams, which capture seasonal rains, are being developed to help deal with this, and several parks and recreational spaces created surrounding them, such as Wadi Hanifah. Citizens appear to recognize these efforts – registering the highest levels of confidence among the surveyed cities’ respondents in their city authority’s ability to protect infrastructure from natural disasters (only 25% responded negatively), while 64% also agree or strongly agree that the amount of green space in Riyadh has expanded in the last two years.

Compared to previous rankings in several ‘world’s safest city’ lists, 69% of Riyadh citizens told us they are confident in their city government’s ability to protect infrastructure from terrorism. This is significantly higher than the other major cities surveyed, including Toronto (30%) ― which appears almost 100 places above Riyadh in SafeAround’s World’s Safest Cities ranking.

Saudi Arabia takes national security threats very seriously. Its firm approach and defense budget — which is the third largest in the world — no doubt boosts citizens’ confidence in their country’s ability to manage terrorist attacks.

In line with Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia has been fast tracking digital-infrastructure advancements to support related economic sectors and start-ups, and also announced plans to train 800 government employees as cybersecurity specialists. Riyadh citizens again recognize these developments, with the majority confident in the city government’s ability to protect infrastructure from cyberattacks.