Brand Dubai: The Instant City; or the Instantly Recognizable City

With ambitions to become a hub of global commerce, a top tourist destination and a shopping Mecca—a New York/Las Vegas/Miami rolled into one—Dubai has been spending billions of dollars to build an astonishing modern city nearly from scratch in a mere 15 years. To date some $100 billion worth of real estate under construction or in the pipeline continues the boom. Combining the involvement of local businesses and innovative strategies of urban marketing with headline catching projects, Dubai has set out to transform its urban landscape, and its image. Ambitious mixed-use urban developments featuring luxury residences, hotels and office blocks, huge shopping malls and imaginative entertainment complexes are rapidly changing the face of Dubai emirate and are putting the Dubai property market on the world stage. The catalyst for much of this expansion, this paper argues, has been the emirate's decision to allow non-nationals to purchase freehold property. The paper concludes by questioning the sustainability of this growth but does not attempt to offer any answers, given its rollercoaster nature.