An Arab study conducted in March 2026 performed a climate simulation of Gulf and North African cities. The result was that cities relying entirely on glass facades without shading require 240% more cooling energy than buildings with advanced thermal insulation. It recommended an immediate shift to hybrid architecture that incorporates air openings and self-shading.

Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper published in late May of this year about a Saudi plan to implement a project to cool Riyadh, set to begin next year 2027. The target is to reduce the temperature of asphalt and walls surrounding insulated buildings by rates ranging from 8 to 15 degrees Celsius. The project's budget and implementation phases have not been determined, as it is still under consultancy and analytical study by the Greek company Planet, which identified five experimental zones to test and evaluate cooling solutions. It was given 12 months to understand thermal challenges, present its full plan, and work on it. The project is considered a proactive measure to enhance the Saudi capital's attractiveness as a global destination for living and investment, in addition to transforming it into one of the most sustainable and climatically moderate cities in the region. It falls under the Riyadh Green umbrella, linked to the Kingdom's Vision targets and the Saudi Green Initiative.

The Riyadh cooling project is not a cosmetic measure but an urgent emergency plan to correct an engineering error that cannot be postponed, especially since human civilization has adopted it for over a hundred years, after turning cities into concrete heat traps. There are Arab and international cities suffering from this, foremost among them Gulf cities with dense horizontal expansion, which face a crisis of heat saturation in buildings. Cement walls and glass towers store heat during the day and release it at night, preventing temperatures from dropping even after sunset. In a study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with the World Meteorological Organization in December 2025, it was found that traditional black asphalt acts as a thermal reservoir, absorbing 95% of the solar radiation falling on it and then re-releasing it into the surrounding air.

All that has been said is known to those in charge of the cooling project. They are studying painting roads and sidewalks with white or light gray nanomaterial that reflects solar radiation instead of absorbing it, reducing the temperature by up to 15 degrees Celsius, accompanied by a drop in ambient air temperature of about 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. Along with this, new projects will be required to have specific percentages of greenery on their facades to generate what is called evaporative cooling—the same principle that explains the coolness of oases in the desert. They are also activating a building code that prohibits the use of traditional reflective glass and replaces it with low-carbon glass capable of radiative cooling, reflecting long-wave heat directly into outer space without trapping it on the street.

The US city of Las Vegas is considered the climatic twin of Riyadh. Its engineering reports for 2025 showed that its large concrete expansion in the 1990s raised its nighttime temperatures by about 4.2 degrees Celsius, depriving the city of its historical desert advantage. It was known for its cool nights but has now become more like an oven or an energy storage that never rests. The California Energy Research Institute published an important study in November 2025, confirming that replacing dark surfaces with reflective surfaces in cities helps reflect up to 80% of sunlight into space and reduces indoor building temperatures by 18%.

An Arab study conducted in March 2026 performed a climate simulation of Gulf and North African cities. The result was that cities relying entirely on glass facades without external shading require 240% more cooling energy than buildings with advanced thermal insulation. It recommended an immediate shift to hybrid architecture that incorporates air openings and self-shading. The above has not been overlooked in the Saudi cooling project, as Riyadh Municipality is considering opening giant corridors that allow natural valley breezes, such as those from Wadi Hanifa and Wadi Al-Sulai, to penetrate concrete blocks into the city center and disperse hot air trapped between towers. This concept is derived from the genius of ancient Islamic city planning.

The Riyadh cooling project focused on scraping asphalt and coating it with heat-reflective materials, which is good, but according to architecture experts, it is not suitable for the Saudi capital because its ground is mostly solid, being concrete or asphalt, preventing soil respiration. Advantage can be taken from an engineering study published by the Royal Institute of British Architects in September 2025 on sponge cities, which allow underground soil to release its stored moisture to the outer layer to cool the air, reducing air conditioning loads by 22% without resorting to chemical coatings that may erode due to tire movement, thereby turning streets from energy storage into self-cooling paths. Water experts are cautious about planting millions of trees in a dry environment like Riyadh without regulated irrigation fully reliant on gray water, as it would lead to the opposite result: dry soil would absorb the remaining moisture in the air, raising the perceived heat stress index among people. All this is not lost on the government agencies and experts working on the Riyadh cooling project, but I say what I said as a reminder and out of concern, especially since it is the most beautiful city on the nation's map and in its memory.