Category: dubai

Travel – Architecture and Cities

 

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I love it that every city I visit is different. Sometimes people ask me what is my favourite city out of all those that I have visited, and of course that’s an impossible question, but I sometimes try to work it out.

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There is a big difference between cities that were built as cities and those that simply evolved over centuries, from settlements beside rivers or the sea, into those that exist today. There are the great cities of the world, London New York Paris etc, and then there are cities, none the less great to those who live there, but not one of the places that everyone feels they must go to.

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London is a city that has evolved over centuries from a small settlement in Roman times to the metropolis of today. The City of London is formalised architecture the result of the great fire in the 17th century which led to the city being laid out but for the rest it has grown and evolved over centuries resulting a whole mixture of styles uses and inhabitants, some would say a whole series of villages strung together.

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As a contrast the centre of St Petersburg was planned and built and preserved, despite wars and changes, such that even today you can get the feeling of being just a step from the world of Tolstoy and the characters of War and Peace. Sometimes that purity has an almost big chocolate box feel about it, almost too good to be true, but such a pleasure to explore, and a living cultural museum.

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Eastern cities reflect the rises and falls of their history and culture and have become a world of enormous contrasts, where ancient powerful histories have faded and been replaced by new modern recoveries of prosperity, interlaced with the growth of informal settlements resulting from the migration of poorer inhabitants from the countryside to the city in search of a better life.

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Some cities are defined by nature, the physical environment dictating the shape and limits of the city, and nature itself being the limiter of its expression. Then there are the new, purpose built, modern cities of the 21st century, pragmatic, functional but none the less appealing for the imagination of their design.

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Which are your favourites, well you pay your money and you take your choice but for me, despite my efforts to analyse, I don’t know, I still love them all because what ever they look like, however planned organised or random and chaotic they are, it’s the inhabitants that define them

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Dubai – Another World

 

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Dubai is a city where time has a number of dimensions. On the one hand a city of the future, on another an ancient part of the world where the old world can still be seen; it’s a great intersection for world travellers from different time zones and it is a world of migrant workers.

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The airport, which I often use as a hub on my travels, is fascinating in that you can sit in a café at what is 1 am my time having a midnight snack and talk to someone having breakfast and another having dinner, all passing through at that moment. It is like a self-contained timeless place.

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Best known in Dubai are obviously the modern parts, the world of tall buildings modern condo developments, the marina and the commercial area. The Burj Khalifa always reminds on of an “about to depart” rocket when seen from the ground.

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My favourite part to stay is Bur Dubai at the western side of the Creek. This is old Dubai, a world where the Creek still has boats that transport all over the Arab world and the East, a world with the Souks, old buildings and mosques. A trip up the Creek in a small boat is great to be able to see both the old and new Dubai.

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The souks are modernised but nonetheless places to bargain and haggle and although many have stalls which sell the same as the one next door there are some gems to be found there.

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Dubai is a world of migrant workers, many living in Bur Dubai who work hard to support themselves and their families back home. I met a Manager of a coffee house, an Afghan, who shared 2 rooms with four other people, rotating the beds between those who worked day shifts and those night shifts, sent all his money home to his family but did not know honestly how long he would be there nor when he would see that family again.

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You like shopping, you like Dubai, the malls ranging from those with lots of shops that have no prices, fronted by men in dark suits white shirts and an earpiece guarding the door, to the more familiar shops we see in other places. It’s a world where for some money is no object. A Italian man was so grateful for directions to the airport to catch a plane he was in danger of missing, that he rewarded me with a cashmere suit before racing off to the plane. He would not take no for an answer.

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It’s fascinating, it’s a place you can live the western beach life or if you dig around you find the old world and the extraordinary cosmopolitan culture that Dubai has become.