Hello Dubai
It’s portrayed as a place of glittering spectacle and conspicuous consumption, but what’s Dubai in the United Arab Emirates really like? Clark Stevenson, an English expat who is one of those who has joined this new gold rush, gives his view.
The easy comparison is with Las Vegas. A boom town. A city of ambition, a bright-lights oasis surrounded by miles of desert. A city of architectural folly and consumer excess.
That’s the lazy comparison. More accurate is Dubai as Los Angeles.
This is a sprawling city of cars and early morning smog. A city of walled-off communities, with 180 different nationalities and 180 little villages.
A city where the language of the street – Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog rather than LA Spanish – is not the language of the government.
Soaring rents
Sure, it has its bright lights and ambitious hordes seeking their fortune but, the people of Dubai will tell you, the city isn’t built on a gamble.
The projects stack up. The city is a natural mid-way point between Europe and Asia, the hub for the Middle East. And, with oil priced so high, the region doesn’t lack for investment cash.
A 159-storey tower next to the world’s biggest shopping mall? Makes sense: the city needs commercial space and malls are packed.
Map of United Arab Emirates
Why Dubai?
In pictures: Dubai
Country profile: UAE
A man-made island home to 400,000 people? Sure, the population grew by more than 100,000 last year, rents are soaring and it needs the accommodation.
A multi-purpose leisure development to dwarf Disney? Bring it on; the UAE’s national airline Emirates has ordered more than 40 of the new Airbus A380s and visitors will need entertaining.
All three projects – Emaar’s Burj Dubai, Dubai Holdings’ DubaiLand and Nakheel’s Waterfront – are under way.
The financial and technical logistics for each would be enough to give the guys at Wembley a hot flush, yet there is no doubt here on the ground that they will come in on time and to budget.
Why? Because Dubai has been hitting its targets for more than 20 years. In 1981 it built what at the time was “the tallest building between Athens and Bombay” – the Dubai World Trade Centre.
Fergie visit
It has created one of the world’s best airlines (if judged by industry awards), hosts the world’s richest horse race and built an iconic “6-star” hotel on its own little island, the Burj Al Arab.
Annular solar eclipse in Dubai
Dubai blends the traditional and the modern
As the city has developed, first the region then the world has begun to take notice. Dubai Holding, the government umbrella firm spanning media to property, hotels to logistics, is starting to make investments overseas.
Plans for two stunning new towers in Istanbul were revealed this week, hotel management contracts are being signed in New York and the A1 “World Cup of Motorsports” is touring the globe as F1 shuts down for the winter.
Sir Alex Ferguson is here next week to open a Manchester United Soccer School, part of the Dubai Sports City development. And the International Cricket Council has relocated here from the home of cricket, Lord’s.
For a Brit – and a Brit journalist to boot – this positive energy can sometimes sit uneasily
As I write, the Brazilian national football team are due in town – who’s to bet they won’t have a kickabout on the helipad of the Burj?
Tiger Woods did it in 2003 and Agassi and Federer did it last year, so it would be more of a surprise if Ronaldo didn’t get up there.
All this creates a peculiar, slightly hyper attitude among residents. Part 1850s Klondike, part 1960s London, there is an air that anything’s possible, that the dazzling soon becomes the norm.
But for a Brit, this positive energy can sometimes sit uneasily. The natural urge is to doubt and snipe.
Twenty years ago, an expat posting to Dubai would have merited a hardship allowance, a 40% hike in UK wages to compensate for the lack home comforts. It was a city of men, working 11 months straight and sending good money back home to their families.
With a few exceptions, this weighting no longer applies, and there are far more women and families here. The success of Emirates has meant there are now around 5,000 cabin crew in the city – the majority of them single women. Without doubt this has changed the mentality of the place.
The recent past was a scruffy town with easy money, the present is a building site with huge ambitions.
The future, as those who arrive every day will say, is up for grabs.
Source: BBC News