It is difficult to believe today, when Dubai has emerged as a global economic player and a major tourist destination, that less than a century ago Dubai was little more than a desert-strewn wildscape where Bedouin tribes roamed the sands and a huddle of settlers crowded around the banks of the lifeblood creek. Even as Europe embarked on the mass industrial destruction of World War I, Dubai still had no running water, no real roads and the main mode of transport was the camel.
Dubai first grew as a hub on the ancient trading route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley and, by the 19th
century, a small fishing village had taken root on the Shindagha peninsula, at the mouth of Dubai Creek. The village was inhabited by the Bani Yas tribe, who were led by the Maktoum family, the dynasty that still presides over Dubai today. The city’s remarkable success story really began in the 1960s. During the process of shaking off the shackles of British colonial rule, oil was struck in 1966 and Dubai has never looked back. Since the 1960s, the population has mushroomed to almost 1.5 million and now an ever-growing number of hotels welcome in the temporary ex-pat workers and tourists who help propel the economy. Indeed, only 22% of the Emirate’s population, at last count, were actually ethnically Emirati in a population mixture that has to be one of the world’s most cosmopolitan. This diversity discourages any real ethnic tensions and while conflict might rage further north in Iraq, Dubai so far has been trouble-free.
Dubai’s evolution has been dramatic, with sweeping skyscrapers and gleaming office blocks rising up on the banks of the Creek. Development has been well managed, with a structure and order to the city that demonstrates that the oil wealth has been well handled and channelled. The rulers of Dubai have a penchant for grand projects – one year a new extension to the port facilities, the next the world’s tallest purpose-built hotel and now the Palm Islands, a massive project that will bring over 100km (62 miles) of new beachfront, through the creation of the world’s three largest manmade islands, as well as hotels, villas, shopping malls, cinemas and Dubai’s first marine park. Land-hungry Dubai is increasingly looking to the waters of the Arabian Gulf in search of new land on which to develop, as recently evidenced by yet another outlandish project, ‘The World’, which aims to build 300 islands in the shape of the world’s countries. Dubai seems to know no end to its ambition, nor does it have any inhibitions, with new plans, such as those for the Middle East’s largest shopping mall, the new airport at Jebel Ali and the world’s tallest tower in BurjDubai, constantly on the drawing board. Even the lifeblood Creek itself is not sacrosanct and plans have recently been announced to alter its course and widen it.
The regional instability that has followed the Iraq war and the rise of Al-Qaeda has, however, put a strain on the emirate and still threatens to hit tourism, one of its most successful industries. Tourism currently remains remarkably resilient with more and more tourists flocking to Dubai every year, which is unsurprising really, considering the idyllic climate for much of the year, with constant sunshine and only an average of five days of rainfall annually. During summer, however, the heat is extreme, making trips away from air-conditioned vehicles and buildings unbearable.
The future prospects of the emirate’s tourist industry and its economic situation as a whole may be increasingly governed by developments in the rest of the Middle East, but for now Dubai is a city on the rise and rise.
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