Saudi Arabia 's  firs t trans form ationsin the urban environment, that is , its first tests with modernization, started in the young kingdom's  Eastern Province, when Aramco began developing housing quarters in the 1930s and 40s.  These residential neighborhoods were not made for Saudis, but mostly for arriving American families to build Saudi Arabia's  oilindustry. In 19 38 Aramco established a housing compound in Dhahran, followed by another one in Ras Tanoura in 1939 and in Abqaiq in 1944. These early interventions on Saudi land have deeply affected the dominating values in the traditional Saudi housing environment. Despite their apparent isolation from other parts of the Eastern Province, and from the rest of Saudi Arabia, these developments would eventually have profound implications throughout the kingdom. Considering the architecture and urban make-up of the Eastern Region is, therefore, an intellectual questioning of the urban changes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia throughout the 20th-Century.  The story of modernity in Saudi Arabia is the story of the cities of the Eastern Province