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Kuwait is entering a remarkable phase of urban transformation that is capturing attention across the Gulf region and beyond.
At the center of this transformation is a bold idea: building a sea city from nothing, using reclaimed land, modern engineering, and long-term urban planning.
At the center of this transformation is a bold idea: building a sea city from nothing, using reclaimed land, modern engineering, and long-term urban planning.
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00:00Along Kuwait's southern coast, where the land was too salty to farm and too flooded to build on,
00:05a full waterfront city has risen from barren marsh, complete with canals, beaches, and homes,
00:10but to build it, Kuwait took one of the riskiest engineering gambles ever attempted.
00:14The Making of Sabah Al-Ahmed Sea City
00:17Sabah Al-Ahmed Sea City sits in the Al-Quran area of Kuwait's Ahmadi Governorate, roughly 85 to 90
00:23kilometers south of Kuwait City and close to the border with Saudi Arabia. It is a pioneering
00:28coastal development that took a stretch of hypersaline salt marsh, known locally as Sabah,
00:32along with two natural tidal creeks, and turned it into a self-sustaining waterfront city filled
00:37with man-made lagoons, artificial beaches, marinas, and residential neighborhoods.
00:41Instead of building an island out at sea, the engineers did something different.
00:45They dug large channels directly into the desert and the marshland, and then used the material
00:49they dug out to raise the land for homes. This created a network of inland waterways that stretch
00:54as far as 9 kilometers from the Arabian Gulf, which is why many people have started calling
00:59it the Venice of the East. The idea goes all the way back to the mid-1980s and to a
01:04Kuwaiti
01:04real estate entrepreneur named Khalid Yusuf Al-Marza. He wanted to build complete coastal cities with all
01:10the services and facilities people needed, because the demand for waterfront living in Kuwait kept
01:15growing, while the natural coastline was almost entirely developed already. His time abroad,
01:20including a stay in the Bahamas, helped shape his belief that the private sector could drive housing
01:24and real estate growth without leaning on the state. He described his goal simply as a residential
01:29city with complete services and utilities built on marshland not suitable for building. He founded
01:34Laala Al Kuwait Real Estate Company to bring the vision to life. Feasibility studies carried out
01:40between 1987 and 1989 looked at several coastal sites, and Al-Kurran was chosen because of its
01:46tidal creeks and its potential for connected waterways. The 1990-1991 Gulf War delayed everything,
01:52but the project pushed forward. It was formally established by cabinet decree and inaugurated on
01:57December 17, 2009, by the then-amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jabr Al-Saba, whose name the city now
02:03carries. The very first phase had already opened to the sea back in 2004, and the entire project has
02:08been privately funded by Laala Al Kuwait, making it the first fully private urban project in the country,
02:13built at no cost to the state. The features of the city are what make it special. At the heart
02:18of it
02:18is a lagoon and canal system that flushes itself naturally using the tides and the wind, without
02:23energy-hungry pumps. This keeps the water clean and healthy, and remarkably, the water quality even
02:289 km inland matches that of the open gulf. The developers have created more than 84 km of
02:34artificial coastlines so far, part of a plan that reaches for well over 200 km in total, and they
02:39protected it all with a 1.2 km offshore breakwater built from more than 200,000 tons of rock. The
02:45infrastructure runs deep and wide, with highways, sewers buried more than 20 meters down, water and power
02:51networks, and complex bridges. More than 250 million cubic meters of excavated material was graded and
02:57reused to raise the land. The city is also home to the largest marina in Kuwait, offering 408 berths for
03:03boats from 10 to 40 meters long, with plans for four marinas in total. Around all of this sit villas,
03:09apartments, green spaces, schools, mosques, and commercial centers, and beneath the surface a
03:14thriving ecosystem has appeared, with well over a thousand species of fish, shellfish, birds, and marine
03:19life protected in a zone where commercial fishing is not allowed. As for the timeline and the cost, this
03:25is a long game. The masterplan spans 25 years and is broken into 10 phases. First phase opened in 2004,
03:32and the works on the earlier phases, reaching up to 9 kilometers inland, were largely completed by
03:37around 2021, with later phases continuing after that. The total development has been estimated at
03:42roughly 5 billion dollars, which is about 1.5 billion kuwaiti dinars, though some reports point to
03:47figures as high as 30 billion dollars once the full long-term scope is counted, and through all of it,
03:52the funding has stayed private. To really appreciate how bold this is, you have to see what this land
03:58looked like before any of it began. From Barren Salt Marsh to Waterfront City
04:03If you had visited in the 1990s, you would have found vast, lifeless salt flats, saturated silt,
04:09and only a few sparse salt-loving plants managing to survive. There was no real vegetation, almost no
04:14marine life in the creeks because the water could not flush and the salt was too high, and hardly any
04:19human presence beyond a small recreational spot called the Al Curran Resort. Satellite images from that
04:24time show a natural, estuary-like area with tidal creeks but nothing built, no channels,
04:29no raised land, no infrastructure of any kind. It was, in the simplest terms, a salt-soaked desert
04:34wasteland spread across roughly 6,400 hectares of coast. That empty landscape became the starting
04:40point for one of the most ambitious transformations in the region. Serious construction began around 2003,
04:45and in 2004 the first channels were cut and the gulf was allowed to flow inland for the very first
04:50time.
04:50Over the next few years, the waterways pushed deeper and deeper. By 2005 they reached about
04:555 kilometers inland, and the first trials of a sole-strengthening method called dynamic compaction
05:00began. Between 2007 and 2009, the canals stretched to around 7 kilometers. The shoreline grew to roughly
05:0784 kilometers across the first phases, and careful monitoring confirmed that the water was flushing
05:13properly and marine life was moving in. By 2013 the waterways reached the full 9 kilometers into the
05:19desert, supported by breakwaters, and by dynamic compaction that involved dropping heavyweights
05:23onto the ground more than 5 million times to pack the soft soil solid. Around the middle of the
05:28following decade, the project was officially inaugurated and named after the Emir. Then from
05:33about 2021 onward, the largest phase so far kicked off after the pandemic, bringing new marinas, bridges,
05:39schools, and commercial centers. Today the contrast could not be sharper. Where satellite images once showed
05:45empty brown flats, they now reveal intricate, winding lagoons that curl through the desert like
05:49fingers, roughly 200 meters wide and 3 to 4 meters deep, connected to the gulf and lined with white
05:54sand beaches. Clear turquoise water sits beside intertidal flats, mangroves, and salt marshes on the
05:59islands. Modern roads, bridges, and utilities weave through blocks of villas and apartments. There is a
06:04major shopping center, green spaces, and populated neighborhoods that are already home to more than 30,000
06:10residents. What was once a lifeless salt bog is now a living, breathing community, offering direct
06:15beach access from almost every residence, with a strong microclimate, real biodiversity, and land
06:20raised safely above projected sea levels. And this is still only part of the picture, because the city
06:25is not finished. When all 10 phases are complete, sometime in the 2030s or beyond, the plan calls for a
06:31self-sustaining waterfront metropolis roughly the size of Manhattan, around 40 square kilometers,
06:36home to as many as 250,000 people. The finished vision includes somewhere between 203 and 273 kilometers
06:44of canals, beaches, and marinas, with four marinas in total and naturally flushing water that stays
06:50crystal clear. How it compares its struggles and what's next. Kuwait is far from the only country that
06:56has tried to turn water into real estate, so it helps to see where Sabah al-Ahmed Sea City stands
07:02among
07:02its peers. The most famous comparison is Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, the palm-shaped island built with 94
07:07million cubic meters of imported sand and rock, and completed in the mid-2000s. Today it is fully
07:13mature and hugely successful, home to Atlantis, luxury villas, and a monorail, with somewhere between
07:1820,000 and 30,000 residents, though it was designed mainly as a tourism showpiece for high-end visitors.
07:24Dubai also attempted the World Islands, a cluster of more than 300 islands, but that project stalled badly
07:30after the 2008 financial crisis, and even now only a small fraction of it has been developed,
07:35with much of it still sitting as bare sand. Qatar's Pearl offers a happier example,
07:39a fully-built waterfront home to around 52,000 residents, thriving thanks to strong property
07:44values and foreign ownership. In Ra's al-Qaima, Al Marjan Island is an emerging luxury destination
07:49anchored by new resorts and still filling in its phases. And in the Maldives, Hulhumel has grown
07:55into a successful urban island of roughly 80,000 people, built mostly to relieve overcrowding and
08:00provide affordable housing. So what is Sabah al-Ahmed doing differently? Quite a lot, as it turns out.
08:06While rivals like Dubai imported enormous quantities of sand and rock and leaned on heavy dredging,
08:11Sabah al-Ahmed reused its own local excavated material, which made it more sustainable and
08:16more cost-effective. Where many of those projects rely on constant pumping and were built primarily
08:20for tourism? This city uses free natural tidal flushing and was designed first and foremost
08:25for permanent living by Kuwaiti families. Instead of burying coral reefs, it created brand new marine
08:30habitat, and its waters now support well over a thousand species in a protected conservation zone.
08:35It is also privately funded from start to finish, at no cost to the state, which is almost unheard of
08:40at this scale. In short, while some peers chase spectacle and others chase tourists,
08:44Sabah al-Ahmed has quietly focused on building a livable, ecologically rich community,
08:49and it is already delivering real neighborhoods, while several rivals are still maturing or falling
08:54short of their promises. That does not mean the road has been smooth. The project has faced real
08:58controversies, and the most serious of them involved sewage. For more than 12 years, the earlier phases
09:04struggled with a stubborn sewage problem that led to illegal connections, high bacterial and chemical
09:09readings at temporary treatment units, foul odors, and swarms of insects. In 2023, a government
09:15performance watchdog reported the elevated pollution, and called for a fresh investigation
09:19inside the Ministry of Public Works. And the Council of Ministers pushed for accountability,
09:24which resulted in a seven-day salary deduction for a negligent environmental compliance official.
09:29The money behind the city is just as interesting as the engineering.
09:33Lala al-Kuwait runs a revenue-driven model built on phased real estate sales, commercial development,
09:38and services, with the infrastructure laid ahead of full occupancy. Residential sales are the main engine,
09:43and demand has been strong, with roughly a third of the units in early phases selling within just
09:48three days. Plots range from about 425 to 1,720 square meters, and Kuwaiti citizens can access loans
09:55to buy in. Layered on top of that is a growing commercial side, including marinas, cinemas, cafes,
10:01and a major shopping district. One notable example is the Sauk Sabah project, a 40,000-square-meter
10:07development featuring a Hilton hotel with 110 rooms and thousands of square meters of retail,
10:12valued at around 25 million Kuwaiti dinars, or about $81 million, and financed with a green loan.
10:18Infrastructure financing continues as well, including power contracts worth around 36.5
10:24million Kuwaiti dinars, roughly $119 million, wired up to serve about 20,000 units.
10:30The whole plan leans on sustainability and economic diversification, and it runs under a 50-year
10:36build-operate transfer concession, which means the developer maintains the waterways and utilities
10:41until the eventual handover. Thank you for watching. We have now come to the end.
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