Goodbye Dubai

In the lounge waiting to fly back to the storm. What the hell happened while I was away? This all added to the surreal experience that is Dubai – witnessing more grand projets than you could shake a stick at while then glancing at TV screens informing us of the latest disaster/bailout to befall the global economy. Again you’re left with questions – will the immense confidence on display at Cityscape and in the region generally overcome or brush aside a world recession? Are we witnessing a jet-speed transfer of economic power from the West to the East, as former London mayor Ken Livingstone told delegates at the Cityscape conference on Tuesday?

It’s definitely easy to knock Dubai. It’s a massive target for rotten egg treatment, from the lack of care and attention in its planning to the lack of respect for its workforce, its greed in consumption and the impact it is having on the land and sea. But then there’s probably a large dollop of hypocrisy to be added to that criticism. Weren’t we at all of this about a 150 years ago, both in the UK and abroad? Dubai is in its age of Brunel right now, hence some issues are side-tracked as the urge to develop and grow dominates. Make that the age of Brunel with a twist of Homer Simpson. You sometimes wonder whether the rulers of the region have brought in the cartoon character as chief planner given the nature of what is going up. A theme park with all replica world attractions? You betcha. Indoor skiing? Why of course. Giant donut world? There must be some working on this right now.

Speaking to architects and consultants in the region and it’s clear that there’s life beyond Dubai. Its wiser and older brother Abu Dhabi has a fully thought out plan to grow to 2030 and its taste is for something rather more refined than fantasy lands and worlds that dominate Dubai. Then you have Oman, Bahrain, Libya and, whisper it, Saudi as areas with significant, yet less gaudy, plans.

And the message from those working over here is that you might not like it all but boy does it work. They plan something and it by and large gets delivered. The palm development took four years. I’ll repeat that four years. If such energy could be channeled and directed, as is the case with the Masdar development (more on that in future posts/content on Building/BD), then the change could be equally dramatic to the initial wave of development over here. Underestimate and dismiss this area at your peril.

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