Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Shanghai

The Tent City of Mina: A paragon of innovation

Saudi Arabia will display the Tent City of Mina in the Urban Best Practices Area for the first time as a testament to one of the most innovative and life-improving urban development experiments in the history of World Expos.

Mina, a city located on the pilgrimage route from Makkah to nearby Mount Arafat, is known for its sophisticated urban planning, facilities and world-class infrastructure. It is one of 55 city projects that have been selected from 226 nominations from around the world for exhibition on the 15-hectare zone, where, for the first time in the event’s history, cities are invited to display their cutting-edge architecture and design concepts.

Judges picked the Tent City after taking into consideration the Kingdom’s efforts to provide modern services to the estimated three million pilgrims who spend four days in Mina during the Hajj pilgrimage every year. The country has spent billions of dollars developing the desert valley of Mina into a modern city built with durable, fireproof, tents with cooling systems, state-of-the-art communication facilities, water and electricity amid a system of flyovers and tunnels.

The Tent City of Mina is located some 7 km to the south-east of the Holy Kaaba in Makkah, and 14 km to the north-west of Mount Arafat. It is in an arid valley, tapering from 2800m to 500m east to west, defined by rocky mountains to the north and south ranging from 450-850 meters above sea level. The gross area of the Tent City is 8 million square meters, of which 4 million are the valley basin, and the rest is in the mountains overlooking the valley.

Plans are to showcase Mina’s most prominent features in six zones:

The first zone: “City and People”, will introduce visitors to the largest tent city on earth, innovatively planned and managed to cater to the needs of almost three million people in an area no greater than four sq km. The Tent City of Mina is a unique urban experiment in size and management complexity. It is the largest tent city ever built, and accommodates more than three million pilgrims who come from abroad for the annual pilgrimage, manifesting a harmonious co-existence of diverse cultures.

A film will be shown in the second zone which shows aerial photographies of Makkah city and Mina valley. Makkah was founded over 2000 years ago in a desert valley surrounded by dry mountains. The Prophet Ibrahim left his wife Hagar and son Ishmael in this dry valley, in obedience to the command of God. Mother and her son remained in the valley until the appearance of the Zam-zam well, which was then surrounded by the tribes of Makkah. One of the most prominent features of Makkah is the Grand Mosque, the holiest place on earth for Muslims. The Mosque contains the Kaaba, the focal point of daily prayers for Muslims, and is the destination for Muslims performing the Hajj and Umrah.

The Grand mosque is always dynamic and under continual expansion. Land near the mosque probably is the most expensive of any international urban center, and multi billion Dollar, mega real estate projects, have been developed in this area to fulfil the growing demands of visitors.

The third zone will focus on the accommodation infrastructure provided by the Saudi government for pilgrims. Progress in the tent industry with the creation of shelters that are fire resistant while offering protection from the harsh desert environment has been a great boon to local residents. The cutting-edge fabric used for the tents has a lifespan of approximately 50 years. It is inflammable, configurable, wind resistant, non-toxic, and allows only 10 percent of the sunlight to penetrate. With a design balanced nicely between traditional and modern, and ease of maintenance, the tents offer the perfect solution to desert living.

Water for the pilgrims is assured by the largest man-made reservoir on earth, containing over 1 million cubic meters of water covering an area the size of a football stadium. There are also 40 water reservoirs throughout the city with an additional 600,000m3 capacity, in the form of metal and concrete reservoirs, plus tunnels in the surrounding mountains at suitable altitudes to produce the hydraulic pressure required to pump water into the distribution network. There are cooled, potable, water fountains, along a complex distribution system involving cooling stations and individual refrigerators and a 145 Kilometer long pipeline. Mina also has the largest slaughterhouse complex in the world, with a capacity of processing 2 million livestock in 3 days.

With a population density of over 5000 people per hectare during the Hajj and Umrah (the densest in the world) Mina presents some unique urban challenges to the provision of safe shelter, good sanitation, water, electricity, communications, civil defence, health care and security, as well as crowd control. The Kingdom recognized the need to work out innovative, sustainable solutions to cope with those challenges and overcome eventualities which have sometimes led to tragic accidents during Hajj.

Frequent use of gas stoves or traditional fires during the Hajj, and subsequent tragic accidents caused by wind-blown flames, have been an area of particular focus to planners in the tent city. Every effort has been made to provide a 3 stage, state-of-the-art fire protection infrastructure designed to quickly control any situation.

• A fully integrated fire fighting system has been established on all streets of the tent city, with adequate pipe diameters and hydraulic pressure up to 12 bars (Atmospheres). Fire hydrants are placed 90m apart. Cabinets with four far-reaching hoses (120m reel long) are mounted at every fire-hydrant to suppress fire without the need for fire fighting vehicles.

• All pilgrim camps have fire cabinets at 100m intervals, each equipped with one 30m hose reel and one fire extinguisher for small fires.

• Every tent is equipped with an automatic fire sprinkler system. Average distribution is one sprinkler per 16m2. The tent fabric is a fire-resistant blend of Teflon coated and fiberglass textile.

Special water reservoirs have been constructed to augment the fire fighting system. Stand-by tunnels in the mountains overlooking Mina from the north have been dug to hold an additional 200,000 cubic meters of water.

The newly designed Jamarat Bridge, which can handle traffic of over 500,000 pilgrims per hour, will be exhibited in the fourth zone. The new design was based on crowd pressure dynamics, conducted through a successful cooperation between international and Saudi scientists.

Transporting three million pilgrims back and forth to the Tent City requires a fully integrated network of pedestrian and vehicular traffic and service routes. Due to the Mina valley’s mountainous topography, 25 tunnels have been constructed in with lengths varying from 200 to 1500m, along with 40 bridges to facilitate pedestrians and vehicular circulation.

The fifth zone will exhibit solutions for health and environmental issues associated with the presence of over 3 million pilgrims concentrated in a very limited space for a short time.

• Grouping and dispatching crowds of pilgrims using computer modelling that determines the best correlation between pilgrim flows, streets and bridge absorption capacity.

• Controlling, grouping, and dispatching, large groups of pilgrims in camps and streets, by involving all Scout organizations, and stressing the need for them to abide by the schedules set beforehand.

• Providing guidance as to the risks of congestion, bedding down in plazas, and stoning at peak times.

• Audiovisual activation of guidance and instruction systems within Mina.

• Applying scientific methods to track and measure crowd motion along Jamarat Bridge and the different levels through the use of infra-red cameras, analyzing the results by computer, and transmitting evaluative information to the control room.

The completion of the first and the second stages of the new bridge resulted in the prevention of overcrowding crushes, the facilitation of the devil-stoning ritual, and better crowd management. There has not been a single fatality on the new bridge, since its official inauguration.

The sixth and final zone will exhibit the future projects planned by the Saudi government for the annual visitors to Makkah. One example is an express train project which will transport five million pilgrims in less than eight hours across five parallel rail lines is currently under construction by a Saudi-Chinese consortium at a value exceeding $2 billion.

In Islam "Building the earth" is the prime reason of human existence on earth, "I will create a deputy on earth" chapter 1, verses 30.

Dr Mohammad Alissan Alghamdi on the Tent City:

“The Tent City of Mina is an urban challenge of another kind: Mina has integrated nature with human basic needs and  the fundamental requirements for safety and health. However, integrating humanity with nature does not impose holiness upon nature at the expense of basic human needs, while integrating humanity with nature does not impose nature’s destruction for human needs. Integration between the two creates a balance that maintains the ecosystem of the Mina Valley by utilizing the positive features of nature and reforming that which is corrupt; making it useful.

The Tent City urban experience has resulted in compact, efficient land use with less automobile use, yet better access; efficient resource use, less pollution and waste; the restoration of natural systems; good quality of living; a healthy social ecology; sustainable economics for companies that provide services for pilgrims; community participation and involvement; and the preservation of local culture and wisdom.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is honored to showcase the Tent City of Mina experience for the first time in the history of World Expos, and wishes to share it with the entire planet as one of the best examples in crystallizing better urban environment for human life in one of the largest tents cities ever built on earth, innovatively planned and managed to cater for the diverse needs of almost three million people of heterogeneous cultures in a very limited area and on a tight schedule.”