Throughout, cranes dot the holy city’s skies, as smog chokes its Mosque and most likely the four million pilgrims who will visit it for hajj this November. The once-heroic mountains on which they stood have been reduced to man-made craters, en route to being turned into the next largest shopping mall, hotel, or luxury residential building. Some have already been replaced with skyscrapers that hover over the Grand Mosque, blocking its southwestern access to the sun. Whole neighborhoods have been completely gutted out, their residents displaced to the outskirts of Mecca and other neighboring cities. Over one hundred buildings are under construction around the Grand Mosque (Masjid al-Ḥarām) and will soon replace the historical, architectural and socioeconomic landscape of this rapidly developing city. In the last decade, Mecca, Islam’s birthplace, has been the target of some of the world’s largest commercial development schemes.

Choking Mecca in the Name of Beauty - and Development (Part 1)

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