Dubai No Longer a Pleasant City

Too Many Hotels, Traffic Jams and a Cluttered Sea Spoil the Dream

Apr 20, 2007

Dubai expands to its detriment. New Sheratons, Hyatts, Sofitels, Radissons and Hiltons are coming on line. Can Solar Power save this once beautiful city?

Dubai is currently Crane City. Wherever you look there are building sites, and the once beautiful Arabian Sea is now cluttered with man-made islands. Etrepreneurs rush to put up more and more hotels and condominiums - all in an ugly mono-colour. Traffic jams make journeys long and frustrating (nearly two hours from downtown to the Sheraton at Jumeirah Beach is beyond a joke). Where are the architects who built the beautiful skyscrapers of ten to five years ago?.

Sofitel continues it Middle East expansion with its second Dubai Hotel - the 242 room Sofitel the Palace at The Old Town Island. The Aviation Club is building a 250 room hotel to be completed by 2008. Hilton Hotels opens its first residential property in Dubai with the 371-apartment Hilton Hotels Jumeirah Beach Residence in September 2008. Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide is going ahead with two new Four Points by Sheraton hotels, scheduled to open in mid-2007, one in the business area of Sheikh Zayed Road, the other in the Golden Sands area. Radisson SAS has now added 125 units to its Dubai Media City Hotel, giving a total room count of 246.

Cruise Liners calling in Dubai

Port Rashid may have to be expanded to cope with the cruise ships docking in Dubai’s port which are getting bigger and bigger. Recently, the Port saw the arrival of the 154,000 tonne Queen Mary II and The Black Watch of the Fred Olsen lineta Line and Costa has announced it is bring jumbo ships to the Gulf next year with both Costa Romantica and Costa Europa scheduled to call at Dubai.

Solar Power for Dubai

Now, Dubai says it is going to go green! Not quite making the desert bloom but at the new Times Residences in City of Arabia development, it is said that the 30-floor building will turn through 360 degrees in a week, the whole driven by storedSolar Eenergy! There will be 200 apartments in the 800,000 ton structure which is scheduled for completion in the year 2009. The units are said to use only 21 kettles’ worth of solar power to rotate 5mm per second.

Further eco-tourist projects in Dubai encompass the long-term aim of increasing the Emirate’s total green area from the present 3.7% to 8%, by 2020. The Municipality is planning five new parks, seven community areas, 13 children’s play areas and 15 city “green” schemes - all for 2007.

But all of this building and expansion is having a detrimental effect on the lives of the inhabitants. Too many hotels, traffic jams and the hideous dust from the building sites (worse than any desert storm) are hindering social intercourse, and the cluttered Arabian sea appears ugly to locals who loved the pristine expanse of blue waters. Many ex-pats who have lived and worked there for years now talk of leaving due to the deterioration in the quality of life.

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