Business | Opinion
Dubai has what it takes to host the Biggest Show on Earth
Dubai has opened a race for the UAE and the region to showcase and prove its talent, cultural heritage and diversity to the world of 2020.
- By Naseem Javed, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 22:52 July 1, 2009
Dubai has opened a race for the UAE and the region to showcase and prove its talent, cultural heritage and diversity to the world of 2020.
There is no other event on this planet that attracts more global attention, uproar and prestige to a city than the Olympics.
There are several components that are essential.
The diversity: No other platform attracts so many nations to one place to simultaneously interact and so joyfully compete in the spirit of the Games.
Dubai provides a highly desirable balance with its fertile grounds to nurture a culture of diversity and tolerance while such Olympic-scale interactions will climax throughout the next decade and beyond.
The competitiveness: The world focuses on the Games and each country cries out for the nationalistic winnings, testing their strength to the finish line. Arabs will have a great journey from the lighting to the dimming of the flame. The entire Middle East and South Asia are poised for such an opportunity.
The standards: The enforcement of quality demanded by the Olympics creates new benchmarks, creating new standards as recently demonstrated, like the poetry in motion displayed during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Dubai is always setting new standards. However, there is a lot of work ahead for Falcon and Associates to win the bid, but again, how fast did the last decade go anyway?
So far with Delhi, Qatar and Kuala Lumpur and others in the play, perhaps Dubai can outpace and outperform the race for the prerequisite of Olympic structures, surrounded by vibrant city planning to fit the 2020 lifestyle and beyond.
Although challenging, based on its recent achievements and foresighted vision, Dubai's bid would be the most impressive.
The nationalism: The Olympics attract every part of the country from government agencies to big and small business, institutions and every kind of organisation one can imagine. This creates a national movement towards achieving something big.
The Dubai model already offers a winning combination where public and private interests support each other and can finance this mega project.
The infrastructure: Olympic-hosting cities suddenly blossom into maturity, creativity, and enforced compliance creates beautiful venues that become lifelong monuments to this great event forever.
In Dubai, with so much construction already under way, the Olympic venues will seamlessly blend with the rest of the planning, thereby making it a very friendly city.
The image: Billions of people anxiously monitor the progress, leading all the way to the final games with amazing ceremonies.
This creates an unmatched, word-class global image position for the host city, respect for the country and its people. Certainly it creates a very special spotlight and will place Dubai into a new stratosphere.
What the Olympics would bring in additional power to Dubai would be the centrality of diversity firmly displayed during the games and later the cultural extension of the regional communities in the Arabian region.
Approaching 2010, the hyper accelerated global image shifts and youth of the Arabian region would share this global task.
In conclusion, from my experience in the 1976 Montreal Olympic games, the city of Dubai already has what it takes to light the flame in 2020. This is a great step forward as the next decade demands another quantum leap.
Naseem Javed is an image and branding consultant.
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