A country with such a high rate of growth and development, like the United Arab Emirates, certainly could not neglect a primary element of progress: infrastructures, which, in effect, are undergoing an unprecedented form of evolution. The traditional role of the government in relation to the development of infrastructures is effectively waning, to make way for a series of partnerships between the public and private sectors, which range across numerous spheres: industrial and commercial, in tourism and property, transport and telecommunications, education and health, ports and airports. In all of these sectors crucial to the life of the country, an extraordinary and comprehensive form of evolution-transformation is taking place, the basis of a substantial change in the texture and urban environment of the seven Emirates.
Apart from the validity in themselves of these great works, it should also be considered that they tend to bring the single Emirates ever more into contact among each other, and, at an international level, the UAE with the rest of the world.
Although Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is also experiencing remarkable infrastructural development, as will here be illustrated, Dubai is without doubt the flagship, with its gigantic poly-functional complexes and its “clusters” of projects in the construction phase, such as the Dubai Waterfront and the Dubai World Central, which are really of Cyclopean dimensions. Together with these, the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Deira inspire great fascination, as well as the islands of The World. In parallel, work on roads and motorways is also being completed, and these will permit even greater access to Dubai and everything that it offers, given that tourist and visitor inflow and the resident population itself will increase in an exponential fashion. Further progress will be achieved thanks to reinforcement of public transport with more buses and air conditioned rooms at bus stops and the limitation of car traffic in different areas of the city. The time is now about right for the construction of an underground railway, which will, in the not too distant future, link Dubai to the capital.
Investments in Abu Dhabi are also really enormous. They include infrastructures in the energy and industrial sectors, the construction of a new airport, of a world-scale port and of several industrial zones, together with poly-functional complexes strongly geared towards tourism. The road and motorway network will, naturally, be strengthened, in view also of the completion of the Islands Project: a 27 sq. km natural island at only 500 metres from the coast to the north-east of the city, which will be transformed into an exclusive tourist destination with spectacular beach and coastline, which will be flanked by services and structures of every kind, including those dedicated to culture, sport and to social and tourist life in general. All of this with constant attention paid to protection of the environment and of animal and vegetable species. Lastly, roads, motorways and centres for congresses and trade fairs will complete the range of infrastructures being realised in Abu Dhabi.
Photograph provided courtesy of Igor Yariv