Dubai has cottoned on to a development strategy that should serve it well over the coming decades — think horizontal rather than stick with anything vertical. Instead of creating corridors of massive and concentrated high-rises, the city will be served well by the extension of the development landscape to under-utilised locations. And as these new projects take shape, it will give off a more rounded — and greener — profile of the city.
The transition process will be made easier given that Dubai still has vast stretches of undeveloped land blocks available to the city’s planners. It has already been done before. The area in and around the Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Road is seeing pockets of development and without one creating bottlenecks for the others.
A similar tactic can be applied elsewhere. For developers, a transition from thinking towers to low-rise communities come with cost-benefits. The yields they can realise from the latter are getting better and can be stretched over a longer time frame. Add to its many benefits accruing from sustainable development practices.
