Kuwait Municipality has finalised a new masterplan for the Silk City development in the north of the country.

“We have finalised Silk City,” said Saad Saad Saud Muhailbi, director of the masterplanning department at Kuwait Municipality, speaking at MEED’s Arabian World Construction Summit (AWCS) in Dubai on 12 May. “We have approved the land use.”

The masterplan was prepared with Canadian firm Malone Given Parsons, which signed an agreement with Kuwait Municipality to prepare a masterplan that will replace the previous designs for the City of Silk and Bubiyan island developments in January 2011.

Malone Given Parsons worked with the local Gulf Consult to review and update the previous masterplans for the northern sub-region of Kuwait, which includes the Subiya promontory, the location of the proposed Silk City, and Bubiyan island.

The new masterplan replaces a proposal launched in March 2006 by UK-based Eric Kuhne & Associates. The $77bn Madinat al-Hareer (City of Silk) design was abandoned in the wake of the global financial crisis.