Dubai - an urban planning assessment

Chicago Tribune:

Dubai just opened the ultimate trophy building -- the world's tallest skyscraper, which soars a neck-craning 2,717 feet into the air -- but just try getting there from the airport. Your polite, epaulette-wearing cabdriver screeches down a 12-lane highway and -- with the tower in plain sight -- he goes miles past it, leading you to wonder whether he's lost his way or is ripping you off. Only when he finally reaches an interchange and then doubles back to the tower do you realize what's going on: Dubai wins no medals for urban planning.
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Take the palm-shaped, artificial island that adds to Dubai's short supply of lucrative coastal real estate and forms one of the emirate's iconic images. The island is a miraculous engineering achievement, formed by dredged sand and constructed with the aid of a global positioning system. Yet the only way to get a pleasing overview of its thin, frond-like strips of sand is to look at a map or charter a helicopter. At ground level, the fronds are packed with high-priced villas while the stemlike road leading to them is lined with monolithic rows of hulking apartment buildings. These look as though they were designed by architectural refugees from East Germany who added a few Islamic touches.
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Indeed, Monday's abrupt renaming of the tower from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa -- in honor of the Abu Dhabi sheik who bailed Dubai out of its debt crisis last fall -- only underscores the impression of helter-skelter growth here.

The exception?

The shining exception is the still-unfinished Dubai Metro system, which opened last September and was designed by a team that included the Middle Eastern offices of two global firms, Aedas and Atkins. The mostly elevated line here is driverless and automated, with air-conditioned cars and stations (the better to ward off summer heat that rises to 120 degrees). The stations, with their boldly sculpted golden roofs, wisely make this civil engineering project visible rather than anonymous. They can thus be counted upon to draw riders and nearby development that will cut down on car use and save energy.

Another exception: "Its old downtown, located along the creek that bespeaks the emirate's fishing village and trading post origins, is a charmer, with arcaded old marketplaces, or souks, and picturesque wooden water taxis ferrying Dubaians back and forth across the creek. Here are age-old lessons of walkable streets, mixed uses and the use of aged buildings that form still-relevant models for planning cities."