Sailing around The Palm Jumeirah on a motorboat, I knew that I was inside a scene that belongs to the coming century: artificial sand bars curling around man-made channels of foamed water, cranes rotating among clusters of mathematically spaced palms growing on a man-made island. The artificial palm tree-shaped island is not an ordinary tourist development. A huge causeway connects it to the mainland and over it an ant-column of trucks pour back and forth in a sweltering cloud of white cement dust.
Khudr Hammoud, a young Lebanese publicity executive who represents Nakheel, the Dubai construction company building The Palm, looked as bewildered as me.
“I had no idea it was this big,” he murmured. “You do know that you can see it from outer space?”
From that cosmic vantage point, this improbable floating world will indeed look like a palm tree. And The Palm Jumeirah is the smallest of three planned “Palms” that will one day house a marine tourist habitat consisting of hundreds of villas, hotels, resorts, restaurants and “themed communities”, that is, gated villages in different architectural styles. Built on piles sunk into shallow waters and sheltered by crescent-shaped breakwaters, the Palms will increase Dubaiﾴs beachfront by some 120kms. Twelve thousand real palms will shade the developmentﾴs streets. Naturally, Nakheel calls it “the eighth wonder of the world”.
Khudr had the boat swing close to The Palm’s man-made shore. A jungle of scaffolds and cranes shimmered just above the waterline. The cement shells of villas materialised out of the sand.
“Dubai always has to be the biggest,” Khudr said. “The biggest this, the biggest that. You could say it’s a new paradigm for the Arabs. Of course, everyone is jealous. The Saudis are pissed off by all this permissiveness on their doorstep – but Dubai is going to transform the Middle East.” His voice became scornful. “Dubai, not the so-called new Iraq.”
As we rounded the canopy of The Palm, the world’s tallest hotel duly swung into view. The Burj al-Arab, perched just off Jumeirah beach, is shaped like a shiny white dhow sail and has become the national icon of Dubai. It was the week of the Dubai Open, and Andre Agassi had just played a charity game of tennis on the hotel’s rooftop heliport.
“Taller than the Eiffel Tower,” Khudr dutifully chimed in. And, he might have added, the world’s only seven-star lodging, a symbol of Arab capitalist pride. But it is nothing compared with the three Palms: the Jumeirah, the Jebel Ali and the colossal Deira.
Seen from the water, Dubai’s suburb of Jumeirah is all hard-edged glass towers bursting upwards within a cobweb of cranes, gaudy and swaggering. The architectural styles are mix-and-match: Arabian Nights, cool International, a colossal shopping mall called the Madinat, built to imitate an ancient Gulf city, complete with faux-mud towers and crenellated walls. Half construction site, half Blade Runner fantasy, Dubai – one of the world’s fastest-growing cities – seems to be a conscious attempt to out-Americanise America, to out-Disney Disney, to out-westernise the west.
In fact, Dubai’s ruler, His Highness Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is masterminding an extraordinary gamble: that he can turn the 2.4 million tourists who visit Dubai every year into 15 million by 2012. To do this, he is using two construction companies in which he has a majority share, Nakheel and Emaar, to reconstruct the city-state from the bottom up. The two companies act as rivals, spurring each other on: the new city will have the world’s tallest tower, the Burj; the world’s largest shopping mall, the Mall of the Emirates; and the world’s largest theme park, Dubailand. And, of course, the world’s largest artificial islands. Dubai wants to super-size itself.
Behind the Madinat lie strange, gated mini-towns with names such as Media City, Knowledge Village and Internet City. As you drive by Internet City, you see the cuboid headquarters of Microsoft and Oracle nestled among palms and master-planned “streets”. Dubai, it is said, is fragmenting into these gated mini-cities, which serve both corporations and tourists wanting to buy villas in themed communities.
The Palms offer a selection of just such themed residences, with styles ranging from Santa Fe, Greek and contemporary to the “Grand Majlis Arabic”, which echoes the traditional domestic architecture of the Gulf. There will be shoreline apartments in towering blocks reminiscent of Stalinist hotel architecture – in this case, however, topped with Indian cupolas. Interiors will be lavish, a riot of marble and stupendous chandeliers. Canals, docks and beaches will permeate every neighbourhood.
The Palms will offer a new kind of “resort living”. But they are not alone in the waters off Jumeirah. Having sold nearly all its properties, Nakheel decided to get even funkier. Why not build a whole series of 300 man-made islands which, joined together, would form an image of the world? The World, as it inevitably became known, has now been built 4km out to sea, with the sandy isles shaped like various countries in sizes ranging from 150,000 to 450,000 sq ft and priced from about $11m to $36m per island. There’s a France, a USA, an Italy, an Egypt, and so on. A hundred of them have already been sold – Rod Stewart has bought England, the Nakheel people tell me.
Nakheel assumes that the super-rich want nothing more than to own a private island that is vaguely connected to other private islands (you could, theoretically, swim to your neighbour’s for lunch) and to a sophisticated metropolis. Moreover, owners can build whatever they want on the island, although Nakheel gently tries to persuade them to reflect each island’s national identity.
We steered a course between a group of these islands, passing so close that it was impossible to judge which part of the world we were navigating through. “I think,” Khudr ventured, “it’s Africa. I think this island over here is Saudi Arabia. Yes, it’s Saudi. There’s Oman.”
A little further on, we came to a sprawling white villa being built for the United Arab Emirates’ defence minister. The house already had its sun-proof blue windows and steel balcony rails, as well as a grove of young palms with tightly bunched fronds. A house rising from the sea, surrounded by ocean on all sides – the ultimate in planned seclusion.
“And it’s much better than a real island,” enthused Khudr. “These islands come with all the infrastructure you’ll ever need. And if you need a restaurant or a bank, all you do is take a short boat ride. The world’s tallest hotel is right there.”
Hamza Mustafa is the head of Nakheel’s sales division, working out of a surreal showroom in the company’s mainland headquarters just next to The Palm Jumeirah. In traditional robes and headdress, he sweeps with regal authority through scale models of The Palms and The World followed by a minion carrying a silver coffee pot. The coffee is strongly scented with cardamom and Hamza’s English is equally laced with intonations picked up during his schooling in the Somerset countryside. He is the face of the new Dubai: smoothly debonair, armed with statistics and at home in two world languages.
Dubai now allows foreigners to buy freeholds, and the resulting property boom is driving Dubai’s growth. The forces of global tourism are also favouring al-Maktoum’s wildly grandiose visions. “Today’s tourism is driven by climate,” Hamza says. “Sun and sand weighed against the miserable winters in Europe. We realised that Dubai simply didn’t have enough beach – a measly 67km. The palm tree structure enables us to construct thousands of villas, all with beach access, and to double our beach area with one stroke. It’s really quite ingenious. The palm is the perfect commercial as well as aesthetic structure.
“We also realised,” he continued, “that since oil was only 6 per cent of our revenue, and falling, we had to diversify. Tourism is the world’s biggest industry. And tourism itself is changing. A lot of our clients from places like Britain want to live here part of the year. Forgive me, but your climate… ” He opened his hands wide, as if to suggest that Allah had not favoured my country in that department.
But where were the clients coming from?
“From all over. The UK mostly. Then Hong Kong, India, Germany. Some from the US, but on the whole we find that Americans are terrified of the Middle East. It’s possible that Atlantis might change that.”
Atlantis? Hamza’s eye gleamed. “Yes, Atlantis.” Atlantis is a theme park-cum-hotel being built on The Palm by the South African hotel entrepreneur Sol Kerzner, and replicates his resort in the Bahamas, which is themed around the famed lost city.
“Atlantis will make people think of the Bahamas. And we are certainly going to overtake the Bahamas.”
Here in the opulent Nakheel headquarters, the world is certainly shrinking – I can hear a dozen different languages. The word “multicultural” is on everyone’s lips in Dubai. Not only is 80 per cent of the population non-Arab (mostly Indian) but the new developments are all deliberately themed to be international. The city’s most lavish malls, the Mercato and the Wafi, hark back to Renaissance Italy and Ancient Egypt respectively. Everywhere you turn, incongruous eruptions of cultural collage jar the eye. It is a strange interpretation of the notion of “international”. Places such as Las Vegas and South Beach in Miami are providing Dubai with a hard-nosed urban model for “resort living”. Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US, and increasingly its residential developments are themed to resemble resorts. People want resort amenities in their new homes, not just a pool. They want room service, restaurants, entertainment – the works.
Consequently, the holiday and normal life (hitherto antithetical experiences) are being elided by property developers as they realise that housing can be designed to accommodate both simultaneously. Life will become a continual holiday, and the holiday will become a non-stop way of living. At least, so Nakheel hopes. For Nakheel and Emaar have understood this trend perfectly; indeed, they are depending on it.
Nakheel’s marine projects are equalled in scale by their seven monumental onshore sites. There is, for example, Dubailand, a $4.9bn Arab “Disneyland” larger than the present surface area of Dubai itself, and located a few miles into the desert. Dubailand will be divided into six themed worlds and 200 projects, from a space exploration exhibition and a full-sized dinosaur enclosure to an indoor ski-slope and an ecological dome for growing desert vegetation. Nor should one forget the pyramids.
There are themed residential “cities” such as Jumeirah Islands, where 50 clusters of man-made inshore islands built on to an artificial lagoon will offer 736 villas in styles dubbed Oasis, European and Arabia. Perhaps most daring, though, is International City, a complete miniature city rising in the al-Warsan district around an emporium shaped like a snaking dragon and run by Chinamex Middle East Investment. International City is primarily a residential development. To be completed later this year, it covers 800ha and is situated about 12km from Dubai airport. The idea is to fuse commercial trade, tourism and residency within a self-contained utopian community. On a dusty afternoon, I drove out there.
So far, the China section is the only residential area that has been completed. The streets are finished, but bare, the shops not yet filled in, the traffic lights yet to be hooked up. There was a curious sense of a communist city, with tall blockhaus apartment complexes laid out along geometrical axes, their vaguely Chinese motifs perhaps comforting to the crowds of Chinese Dragon Mart workers wandering about with rather grim expressions. The blocks are overwhelmingly tall, a pale cappuccino colour striped with orange bands. A city not yet lived in is as spooky as one that has been deserted. A few red lanterns hung from the communal doorways under Chinese banners wishing the newcomers good luck. Nearby, immense construction sites marked the future neighbourhoods designated as Russian, French, Italian, English, Moroccan, Persian and Thai/Indonesian.
I asked my Tamil driver what he thought of this apparition rising out of the desert. His complaint was immediate.
“No Tamil neighbourhood,” he shrugged, as if stating the obvious. “No Tamil area never, no!”
And it was true. There will never be a Tamil Sector at International City, or an African Village in any of Dubai’s residential wonderlands. The city’s themes are overwhelmingly European and Islamic, reflecting perhaps the client base that is sustaining the construction boom. However, it is a moot point why Europeans and Arabs would want to live in Disneyfied versions of their own cultures in the middle of the Gulf. Perhaps it is the idea that if you could fuse Arabian winter weather with the Place des Vosges or a Cotswolds village you would have a residential paradise of sorts. Or else it is the Vegas conceit: that artificiality is more fun than the real thing.
Nakheel is not alone in driving the frenetic Dubai fantasy home boom. A few miles out of Dubai City, to the south-west, an immense new “town” called Arabian Ranches is taking shape in the open desert, a perfect simulacrum of western suburbia hemmed in on all sides by vistas of burnt sand, drinn grass and thorn trees – as well as pylons and webs of cables. Giant billboards litter the desert: Polo Club, Dubailand, Properties Now Open. Emaar has been developing its own themed residential parks to lure sun-hungry northern Europeans to a new life. And because barren land is cheap they have sought to exploit Dubai’s other asset: the desert.
Arabian Ranches is one of Emaar’s showcase projects, alongside elite enclaves such as Emirates Hills, considered Dubai’s equivalent to Beverly Hills. The themes here are multilayered. There is the desert, of course, and then there are horses. Arabian Ranches, in fact, is designed around a kind of equestrian chic. Visitors to the sales presentation centre are greeted by horse figurines, murals of jockeys, mounted saddles and riding crops, and plasma screens showing videos of happy riders. Blown-up horse heads stare from the walls. It looks like the home of a millionaire jockey with the walls blown away.
A full-scale model of the Ranches shows off its facilities: school, community centre, polo field, equestrian centre, pools, a car racing track and hundreds of houses and villas. One day, Dubailand will sit right next door – the two developments together will practically form a new city as large as Dubai is now.
Louise Saul, an English expat, took me around the currently deserted suburban mazes. The show homes are furnished to the hilt, complete with white grand pianos and gilded horse sculptures. There are seven distinct developments within the Ranches, each one with its own theme. Spanish villas will dot the Gazelle, Terra Nova will have the popular Santa Fe style, al-Mahara will boast traditional Arabic houses, as will a village named Savannah. The top-end units will be the Hattans, elaborate three-storey Arabic houses starting at AED5.5m (ﾣ785,000).
We arrived at a road screened by coloured billboards: “A Truly Spanish Masterpiece. Artisenal [sic]. Belleza.” I spotted a quote from Gaudi: “Originality consists in returning to the origin.”
These were a cluster of Spanish villas, with salmon pink walls and tiled roofs, that would not have looked out of place on the Costa del Sol. I asked Louise why theming was so popular here.
“I guess it’s in the air worldwide. Everything in Dubai is themed, perhaps because the whole place is so geared to tourists.”
A tourist nation – if there is now such a thing – would perhaps inevitably be themed to entertain its visitors. One Spanish villa was decorated like the second residence of a prosperous Madrid general – leather chairs, silk cushions, droplet chandeliers, some vaguely Daliesque sculptures and lush equestrian oil paintings. The high-tech kitchen overflowed with tall jars of preserved peppers and olives. Spanish music tinkled away on the sound system.
“Expats buy to live,” explained Louise. “This is one of the safest environments on earth. The perfect family environment. No crime, no noise, no hassle. And low air fares are making Dubai as accessible as the Costa del Sol.”
I felt a little like Goldilocks awaiting the arrival of three pampered bears. Another group arrived behind us, three Brits looking for a holiday home who had seen Arabian Ranches on TV back in Birmingham. They looked a little stunned by the luxury finishings. Starting at about AED480,000 (ﾣ68,500), Emaar’s entry-level properties are reasonable by British prices. “Do we get the horse paintings thrown in?” the woman asked, only half joking.
From a back balcony we stared out over the landscape. Beyond the neatly laid out pool, a swathe of desert reached out to a low construction site on the horizon half concealed by thorn trees.
“In five years this will all be residential,” Louise said. Or, as Emaar has it, a “lifestyle community”. Below, the water bar stood ready for action, the giant decorative amphorae and the folded parasols waiting for their new owners.
Another English Emaar rep, Sara White – who deals in properties beside the Ian Baker-Finch desert golf course – told me that buyers were at their doors by 8am to snap up the Arabian Ranches units.
“It’s partially driven by investment, because prices will definitely rise here. But people are also living more globally. In Dubai now, the hotels are all full, whereas they used to be empty. They’ve understood tourism here brilliantly. There’s no graffiti, no trash anywhere – it’s the perfect tourist model.”
Emaar, however, is not stopping at desert residences. In the heart of Dubai itself it is fashioning an urban-retail-residence complex around the world’s tallest projected tower, the Burj Dubai. At the heart of this leviathan will be the Dubai Mall, a nine million sq ft shopping wonderland larger than 50 football pitches – and the biggest mall on earth. The mall will have a Waterworld aquarium and the world’s largest gold souk. But it will also have a massive residential neighbourhood themed around “traditional architecture”, to be called Old Town. Armed with $22bn in assets, Emaar is aiming at nothing less than remaking the heart of Dubai into a synthesized resort city, and, incidentally, the shopping capital of the world. Ibrahim al- Hashimi, executive director of Emaar’s retail and leasing department, says Dubai’s growth has no natural limits.
“We have a vast potential audience. We have on our doorstep in Europe and Asia some 3.2bn consumers armed with a combined GDP of $18.3 trillion. They’ll be knocking on our door.”
From the needle-like Burj tower, a web of hotels and homes will radiate. Old Town is inspired by a small Persian neighbourhood in Bur Dubai called Bastakia, whose houses have curious wind towers made of gypsum clay, as well as terraces, balconies, parapets and pergolas. Old Town will be a simulacrum of “old Arabia” in an Arabian city that has become totally western in style.
In its marketing, however, Emaar calls the communities of Old Town “lifestyle choices” rather than places. Tourist real estate is an experience. There is a Huxleian feel to all this, but as we wandered out to another show villa – this one in Contemporary Style, looking a bit like a funky interior from A Clockwork Orange – I saw yet another carload of prospective buyers rolling up with the expressions of dazzled children.
Emaar and Nakheel have certainly grasped the nature of their western clients, which is to say they have grasped the nature of western discontent. Dubai offers itself as a kind of perpetual therapy, an escape that looks – cleverly – not like a fantasy but like a normal suburb.
By Lawrence Osborne, The Financial Times
ft.com
