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<p>This paper examines how cultural foundations shape spatial patterns of ill-being in Saudi Arabia by applying the Culture Based Development (CBD) framework to 176 cities. Ill-being is measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 population in 2024 and modelled as a function of cultural, demographic, health and economic factors. Using newly assembled administrative data, Principal Component Analysis is used to extract two cultural dimensions from fourteen indicators: Cultural Heritage (CH), capturing historical and identity-based assets, and Living Culture (LC), capturing contemporary cultural participation. These latent factors are then incorporated into cross-sectional ill-being regressions estimated using Ordinary Least Squares with robust standard errors. The results indicate that CH has a negative and statistically significant association with ill-being, indicating that cities with stronger heritage assets tend to exhibit lower mortality rates. This finding differs from some earlier CBD interpretations that linked heritage to social closure and suggests that in the Saudi context, heritage may function as a form of positive social capital that supports cohesion and stability. LC has the expected negative sign but is not statistically significant, reflecting the recent emergence of contemporary cultural activities under Vision 2030. The study extends the CBD to a Gulf-Arab context for the first time, refines the role of CH within the framework and proposes a replicable strategy for measuring culture in data-scarce environments.</p>

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Cultural Foundations of Well-Being in Cities of Saudi Arabia

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月27日

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  • Sameera Almalki

摘要

This paper examines how cultural foundations shape spatial patterns of ill-being in Saudi Arabia by applying the Culture Based Development (CBD) framework to 176 cities. Ill-being is measured as the number of deaths per 100,000 population in 2024 and modelled as a function of cultural, demographic, health and economic factors. Using newly assembled administrative data, Principal Component Analysis is used to extract two cultural dimensions from fourteen indicators: Cultural Heritage (CH), capturing historical and identity-based assets, and Living Culture (LC), capturing contemporary cultural participation. These latent factors are then incorporated into cross-sectional ill-being regressions estimated using Ordinary Least Squares with robust standard errors. The results indicate that CH has a negative and statistically significant association with ill-being, indicating that cities with stronger heritage assets tend to exhibit lower mortality rates. This finding differs from some earlier CBD interpretations that linked heritage to social closure and suggests that in the Saudi context, heritage may function as a form of positive social capital that supports cohesion and stability. LC has the expected negative sign but is not statistically significant, reflecting the recent emergence of contemporary cultural activities under Vision 2030. The study extends the CBD to a Gulf-Arab context for the first time, refines the role of CH within the framework and proposes a replicable strategy for measuring culture in data-scarce environments.