- Date: 2013
- Location: Bahrain
- Phase: Conceptual Design
- Site Area: 20,000,000 m2
- Services Provided: Architecture
Early in the 2000s, an endemic housing crisis linked as much to the poverty of the Shiite majority as to the structural impossibility of reorganising a territory divided by traditional property ownership disputes, inheritances and the absence of legal tools, persuaded the State to launch two international urban and master planning consultations. Both of these were won by French consortiums organised by AMA architecture. The new town, stretching along the north coast of the island of Bahrain at 12 kilometres from the capital, is formed by 18 islands creating a total of 1,000 hectares of reclaimed land that, in the long run will house over 100,000 inhabitants and provide 50,000 jobs. The backfill infrastructure works, subject to a $280 million contract, were delivered in 2007, at the same time as approval was given for all the urban studies.