Dubai

In the first decade of the 21st century, the dramatic economic development of Dubai was touted as one of the great successes of the global economy. The multicultural society of Dubai and the global reach of its business relationships made it an exemplar of a newly emerging global society. In 2006, roughly midway through Dubai's 6-year economic boom, an account by the journalist Adam Nicolson posed these questions about the wider global significance of the city-state's recent development: Is Dubai, in fact, the fulcrum of the future global trading and financial system? Is it, in embryo, what London was to the 19th century and Manhattan to the 20th? Not the modern center of the Arab world but, more than that, the Arab center of the modern world?

At the time, Dubai's extraordinary construction and real estate–led growth was receiving worldwide press and had garnered academic attention and seized the public imagination. The emirate, one of the seven states of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was growing at an average annual rate of over 8% and was said to be adding between 100,000 and 150,000 new people to its estimated population of 1.4 million every year. This population was global in its origins: Expatriates and migrants from allegedly over 200 countries accounted for some 85% of this total. Some 350,000 people alone were construction workers, largely from South Asia, living in poor conditions in labor camps in the desert. Residential, hotel, [Page 434]retail, and office space all saw huge increases as the city expanded upward and outward.

The boom was neither novel, as it is often presented, nor accidental. Real estate development was, rather, central to the growth strategy of the ruling al-Maktoum family, under Sheikh Mohammed bin Rachid al-Maktoum. This strategy was directed at the realization of the family's long-run ambition for the city-state: to rise to global city status and become the acknowledged trading, commercial, financial, and tourism hub of the Middle East, and a key entrepôt for a region spanning Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe. This realization was to be built on a half-century-long tradition of infrastructure development promoted by the family, notably the large-scale port, airport, free zone, airline, highway, and telecommunications projects constructed from the 1960s onward in service of Dubai's regional trading hub role.

With government as principal strategist, organizer, and actor, the boom saw an acceleration in the pace and intensity of urban and infrastructure development. New economic opportunities, especially in construction and real estate, business services, and tourism and leisure, were simultaneously created and housed. Learning particularly from Singapore's experience, Dubai, like Shanghai at the time, explicitly followed a global city strategy.

Although this is often overlooked, Dubai's traditional economic strengths of shipping, aviation, and trade were also expanded. New port, airport, and related facilities were located on or adjacent to the coastline. This stimulated the further development of advanced business service and technology-based firms housed in purpose-built, incentive-laden business zones, or “cities,” as they are called, as well as export-based heavy and, increasingly, light industrial enterprises, located in nearby free trade zones.

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