Are Al-Farwaniyah Residential Areas Still Residential?

For many years, private residential areas in Kuwait were built on a clear concept: a house for one family, a street serving a known number of residents, parking spaces tailored to their needs, and public services designed according to this simple equation. Over time, some Kuwaiti families expanded, adding floors or apartments within the same house to accommodate children after marriage. This did not pose a real problem, as neighbors in the neighborhood knew each other, and the population remained within the limits the area could absorb. However, what we see today in some residential areas is entirely different. In several neighborhoods, some houses are no longer just family residences; they now contain large numbers of housing units, residents, and vehicles, while streets, parking spaces, and services remain unchanged. The result is clear to everyone living in these areas. Parking shortages are no longer an exception but part of daily life. Cars are parked on both sides of the street, others block house entrances, and a third group searches for any available space, even at the expense of neighbors’ comfort and ease of movement within the neighborhood. The problem here is not the car itself, but the population density that was not taken into account when the area was designed. A house whose size and internal layout allow it to accommodate only four or five cars cannot practically become a source for ten or fifteen cars that rely on the public street to meet their parking needs. The issue does not stop at traffic congestion. Waste containers designated to serve a single house are now required to serve multiple families. As a result, the sight of accumulated garbage bags outside containers has become a common scene in some areas, not due to negligence in cleanliness, but because the volume of use far exceeds what these services were designed for. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the social dimension. In the past, if a car was parked incorrectly or blocked a house entrance, the solution was simple. Everyone knew each other, and a phone call or knocking on a single door was enough to resolve the issue within minutes. Today, a neighbor may find a car blocking his entrance without knowing whom it belongs to. Is it the owner’s? One of the residents? A guest? Is it reasonable to expect him to knock on six, seven, or eight doors inside a single house to find the owner of the vehicle causing the disturbance? The issue is not against tenants, nor against families who provided housing for their children, nor against the owner’s right to benefit from his property. The issue concerns the right of residents in these areas to a balanced environment that preserves the quality of life for which these areas were designed. Successful urban planning is not measured solely by the number of built square meters, but by the ability of streets, parking spaces, and public services to absorb the population and vehicles resulting from this construction. Hence arises a question worth discussing: Should any increase in the number of housing units or population density be linked to the property’s capacity to provide the necessary parking and services within its boundaries? Or should we continue to burden the public street and neighbors with the consequences of decisions in which they were not involved? The street is not part of the property, and neighbors’ parking spaces are not its extension. When infrastructure becomes unable to absorb the new reality, the price is not paid by the property owner alone, but by the entire neighborhood. M. Hussein Mohammed Arty