as an architect,
dubai's got great buildings, great vision, very poor infrastructure that i hope will be improved at some stage..
but at the end of the day, all these buildings are vacant, and i dont see in the foreseeable future, enough people coming to inhibit them... at least not in my lifetime.
this will cause a massive slump in the real estate market... dubai's not being exactly smart about it all, but one would hope they would learn from models of other countries that started doing the same thing and slow down and pay a little more attention to consumer demands, rather than just building huge landmark after huge landmark.
Don't you think the remark "very poor infrastructure" is over the top?
depends, what are we comparing to?
compared to any developed nation, its a joke.... the day i got here the airport was struggling to cope with a bit of heavy rain, the streets were then flooded. how on earth can you ignore a guttering system in something as crucial as an airport??
id hate to think what happened to many other buildings being pelted with rain flat stick with no guttering...
public transport?
no underground system?
the streets of dubai not sustaining its own traffic? it takes you 2 hour to get to and from a meeting in dubai these days. abu dhabi's probably worse in terms of town planning, its like a catacombs between blocks with cars parked everywhere, all different directions.. i can go on and on.
i think poor infrastructure is rightfully so - if you think otherwise, maybe you havent experienced the dubai i did.
dont get me wrong, they seem to have all the right ideas for the future etc, but they're not prioritizing in terms of their town planning...