To be concise about Dubai is harder than you think. The city stands for something in the Middle East’s way of living, but what that something is not always clear. Even after decades, you can’t easily formulate the reasons for your attachment, because the city
“No city exists in the present tense” wrote James Stephens in 1923. “It is the only surviving mass statement of our ancestors, and it changes inversely to its inhabitants. It is old when they are young, and when they grow old, it becomes amazingly and
As private sector developers continue to battle the cycle of post-handover payment plans and price discounting, concerns continue to ratchet up. This is from the demand side of the equation as buyers either wait for better deals and/or invest in the ready market to get
Willa Cather wrote that the literary world “broke into two” in 1922, when writers such as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence and E.M. Forster invented the language of the future for the novel. After decades of globalisation, it appears as if the world broke
Many readers have commented in recent weeks to my column by stating that Dubai’s real estate sector is similar to that of Japan, where asset deflation took hold in the early 1990s. And despite fiscal and monetary stimulus policies being implemented, did not lead to
Those who demand confessions — and concessions — from others must be willing to offer some of their own. Accordingly, here are a few that readers have pointed out to me, as well as my attempt to justify my line of thinking. Real estate prices
Despite Dubai’s property transactions rising for the first five months, the literature on real estate is still replete about prices falling … and of an unquantifiable supply pipeline. It is absurd that this issue still dominates the zeitgeist given the fact that actualisation rates have
These days, whether you walk around parts of Dubai, London or New York, it feels like occupying two distinct worlds at the same time. On one level, you know that you are at the epicentre of business and finance, but on the other, you are
In recent weeks, the headlines have been dominated by Abraaj and the Drake and Scull International (DSI) affairs. Most commonly, these have been sighted as examples of regulatory failures and the need for regulatory reform in the wake of these incidents. While there can and
What makes a city great? Academics and government bodies have long pondered over this question. They emphasise various variables, from pedestrian access — itself tautological because it does not explain the rise of cities such as Los Angeles and Miami — to public spaces, to
