Dubai

Dubai covers an area of 3.900 km2 and has about 1.140.000 inhabitants and is therefore the second largest Emirate. It is located north of Abu Dhabi and south of Sharjah. 99% of the inhabitants live directly in Dubai City, only a few people stay in the desert around.
The Sheikh of Dubai, Maktoum bin Raschid Al Maktoum, is the Prime Minister of the UAE as well. President is always the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi.

The City is located far north in the territory of the Emirate directly next to the Dubai Creek. It is no river, but a part of the Persian-Arabian Gulf.
Long time ago (and long means here around 40 years) there was on the north shore the independent city of Deira and on the southern shore the independent city of Bur Dubai. If there wouldn't be the creek, you were not able to divide the parts of the city anymore. There are only 3 bridges across the creek (but some more are planned) and they are all located a little bit outside the real city center. Therefore you  need an alternative to cross the creek and this is an abra. These are small wooden boats with a very loud engine and a style of driving as they drive their cars as well.

In the North Dubai has a border with Sharjah. Therefore there are only two directions to expand the city: to the South-West along the shore and towards the desert to the South. In this area are at the moment construction sites to build houses for about 1,5 Mio new residents. The entire stretch of 30 km between the old city and the artificial port of Jebel Ali (the largest man made port worldwide) is a complete construction site and every week there are new floors on top of the houses and the speed of construction is unbelievable.

Unfortunately the boom is only related to houses and not to the necessary infrastructure. The speed they build additional streets or expand the existing ones is much slower than the speed of the construction of new skyscrapers. Now they started to create a metro system, partially underground. If this will help is not predictable. When you drive from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, you need for the last 30 km the same time as for the first 120 km. That's the negative side of being a mega city. Now they introduced a road toll system that prevents most of the people to drive on the main road in Dubai, but for people who don't care of the money (mainly the locals) it is quite nice now.

Dubai is since long the trade center on the southern shore of the Persian-Arabian Gulf and is less dependent on oil and gas than other Emirates. This is also necessary because the oil reserves of Dubai will only reach for 10 - 15 years. In the last years the main field of development was the tourism industry where Dubai could reach big success. Dubai, as well as the other Emirates, are a paradise for European tourists. The sunshine is guaranteed, you can reach Dubai in about 6 hrs by plane and the country is extremely save. A big contribution to this success is the state-owned airline Emirates. Over the last years Emirates was elected one of the best airlines worldwide and the strategic location of Dubai between Europe and Asia is also a big advantage. It's half way from Europe to Asia so that it is quite convenient for passengers to have a stop-over in Dubai. The average time people stay in Dubai is 3 days. There are also connections to the Americas, South Africa and to Australia. Emirates can offer very competitive rates because of the tax free environment, the low kerosene prices and nearly not existing landing fees for the airplanes of Emirates, because the airport is also state-owned. At the moment Dubai is building the world largest airport next to the already existing world largest artificial port in Jebel Ali.

Another highlight is the very famous luxury hotel Burj al Arab. The hotel is shaped as a sail, with 321 m the tallest hotel in the world and offers only suites.

Already during the construction phase there was a big effort to place the hotel in the different kind of media all over the world. Still today there are regular reports about this hotel in the TV in Europe. This lead to the fact that the Burj al Arab is nowadays one of the most famous and well known hotels in the world.

Another highlight for the tourists are the shopping malls. Directly next to the Burj al Arab you can find the "Madinat Jumeirah Mall", built in a typical Arabic style. From here you have every evening a great view on the Burj al Arab with the different colors of the illumination. Attached are two nice 5-star hotels, so that their guests don't even need to go out of the area to have some shopping.

On the way to Abu Dhabi you come across the Mall of the Emirates with the indoor ski center. It is the largest indoor snow park worldwide, but the longest ski slope is still in the Alpincenter in Bottrop/Germany (I have to mention it because that my birthplace).

Further towards Abu Dhabi you find the Ibn Battuta Mall, not much smaller than the Mall of the Emirates.

The development of Dubai doesn't seem to stop. At the moment the tallest building in the world is constructed: the Burj Dubai. It is already now the tallest building, but the construction is going further so that we can expect a height of more than 700 m. On the base of the Burj Dubai the Dubai Mall will be built. Planned as the biggest shopping mall in the world, now the Chinese have overtaken Dubai in this competition. But I think that Dubai will strike back sooner or later.

Not to forget the three (!!!) Palm Islands created in front of the shoreline in Dubai. The first one (Palm Jumeirah) is ready to open the first houses; the land reclamation work at Palm Jebel Ali is finished so that the construction of the houses can start and for Palm Deira the land reclamation has just started.

Around Palm Jebel Ali the Dubai Waterfront project will build an own city for 750.000 residents and will stretch until the border to Abu Dhabi. And then there is "The World", some manmade island in the Gulf where the first residents are also moving in soon. In addition to that they plan to built an underwater hotel, but it seems that this project is a little bit on hold due to safety problems.

Into the desert there is the first construction going on for Dubailand. This is a development with different sub-developments, e.g. Dubai Sports City, International City, etc. The latest announcement was to built a hotel strip like in Las Vegas, but without gambling (this is strictly forbidden in the UAE). Here they plan to build the worlds largest hotel, Asia Asia with a capacity of 9.000 rooms.

With the Mall of Arabia another highlight will be constructed and maybe with this project Dubai can overtake China with the worlds largest shopping mall.

In Dubai everything most be bigger, larger, taller or whatever than in other parts of the UAE. The backside is a very poor street infrastructure, so that you are quite a long time in traffic jams. It is fact that you have 5 times the number of pubs and restaurants compared to Abu Dhabi, but you cannot reach more than 2 or 3 an evening because of the traffic.

Out of this reason I love to live in Abu Dhabi and when I need more then I will drive to Dubai.