Where the Desert Meets the City
| **Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Urban–Rural** |
How does Riyadh’s built environment vary across different levels of urban development?
This map explores spatial contrasts in Riyadh’s urban fabric through building footprints and street network data. It combines a 60 × 60 km overview with three equally sized 2.5 × 2.5 km comparison windows.
| Urban condition | Building coverage |
|---|---|
| Compact | 25.1% |
| Intermediate | 8.4% |
| Sparse | 1.0% |
Building coverage measures the proportion of each window occupied by mapped building footprints. The comparison illustrates differences in physical development intensity rather than official urban–rural classifications or historical urban expansion.
Data: Microsoft Global ML Building Footprints and © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Tools: Python, GeoPandas, Shapely, and Matplotlib.
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