Isa Town and the modernisation of Bahrain

Abstract

As a modern phenomenon, the new town spread from the UK to Europe and eventually the rest of the world. New Towns gained widespread attention for their reconfiguration of new social orders and their construction of new spatial domains. They came in all forms and sizes – each was similar enough to be recognised as a new town, and yet each one contained varying iterations and characteristics.

For countries in the Arabian Gulf, new towns were born out of the oil boom and were sustained by a political determination that has capitalised on their value to illustrate new visions of urbanisation, build economies, and mobilise societies living within them. They continue to be a part of political, economic, and social realities, set in narratives of the past as well as urban development plans. Unlike in other countries where they were introduced, such as the UK, their popularity in the Arab world did not wane or diminish. Thus, they remain as relevant today as when they were first introduced there in the second half of the twentieth century.

One of the earliest examples in the Arabian Gulf, Bahrain’s Isa Town, which was built in multiple phases between the early 1960s and the early 1980s in Bahrain, illustrates the evolution of a new relationship between social, economic, and political processes in an evolving state. Until now, however, it has largely been absent from the wider and regional literature on new towns. Originally part of a state vision based on modernisation, Isa Town was designed and supervised by the British company George Wimpey, Ltd., and built by a group of up-and-coming local construction firms. The first of its multiple phases occurred between 1963 and 1974, when the Bahraini state oversaw the building of a whole new town with multiple house typologies for low to middle-income Bahraini families. The original town was also designed to include a wide spectrum of social and cultural amenities such as schools, health clinics, a town centre, a stadium, and other mixed-use facilities, transforming them into the centre of political and social attention in Bahrain and beyond.

This thesis aims to bridge the knowledge gap regarding new town examples outside the West, particularly in the Arabian Gulf. It builds on several key local Bahraini and external archives, using multimodal data in the form of photographic images, cinematographic recordings, and oral history interviews, to make up for silences within archives and address power relations within and across them. The project studies Isa Town and examines why it was built and its meaning to its community and the Bahraini society more broadly. Notably, it was through this state-led housing project that the Bahraini government developed and illustrated its new administrative capacity as it was preparing to embrace sovereign independence, simultaneously transforming society from the inside out. Isa Town was the process in which modernisation was mainstreamed to low- and middle-income Bahraini families, and it served social and political aims, in place of constitutional innovation. More specifically, Isa Town socially transformed Bahraini families and modernised an evolving public administration body while supporting both with extensive contemporary media coverage. This Isa Town study illustrates the transformative nature of the move from older towns and villages for those who came to live there and what the new town represented for the Bahraini state. It also highlights how the new town was a space for both the state and citizens to construct and project their new modern identity, both of which were mediatised through a comprehensive creation and circulation of images to both local and foreign audiences, as seen in photographic images and newsreel creations found within the Bahrain Oil Company archives, their publications and elsewhere.

In short, Bahrain’s first new town illustrates the execution of a national modernisation project at a critical time in its modern history. Due to the continuing interest in new towns in the Arab world and elsewhere, studies of their emergence and creation are as relevant today as they were when they were first introduced. The study of Isa Town sheds light on several important social, political, and administrative considerations regarding new towns and their development, offering critical knowledge for the future of these communities.