DUBAI WALK-IN CITY

In recent years the design and use of public spaces in Dubai have emerged as a fundamental component of urban development. From an almost exclusive automobile-oriented city, Dubai is showing an increasing interest toward exclusively "walkable" areas. In this paper, I will first investigate the characters of an urban context shaped by a car-oriented society. In the second part of the text, I will analyze, through a series of recently completed projects, the current trends in urban design that are potentially transforming Dubai in a "walk-in" city. From ancient times onwards, the relationship between man and animal transport has contributed to historically defining the urban layout and the design of the infrastructure of cities. In the Arabian Peninsula, there has always been a profound relationship between humankind and its means of transportation. This relation goes beyond the purely functional dimension to become an anthropological/cultural one. From this origin, one can perhaps explain the strong bond and interest of Arab populations for means of transportation that from animals have changed, in modern times, into mechanical devices. All over the world, the automobile is something more than a means of transport. It is a status symbol, a synomone of freedom and wellbeing. However, in certain regions of the Middle East, it is even more: it has replaced the camel, assuming all its prerogatives. Indeed, it represents the extension of the human body as an exoskeleton that facilitates movement, and can also be considered as a shelter. When few cars are gathering in a vast deserted parking lot, the creation of a temporary social space takes place. It is a minimum public space entity on wheels. (Fig.1) Furthermore, 'cars' tinted windows are a means of regulating the level of privacy, especially for women. They prevent perceiving the identity of the occupants guarantying a gradient of separation from the outside. Most local women do not get out of cars to enter stores unless they are at a shopping mall. It is the attendant who reaches the vehicle, receives the order, and delivers the goods directly in the cockpit. From the small scale of the minute trading, the influence of automobiles extends to the design of new masterplans. Indeed, the first urban masterplans defined by John Harris (Fig.2), like all those conceived during the modernity, were based on the use of cars. One could say that in the modern emirate culture, walking has never been a favorite habit. With the evolution of transport, much more private than public, walking has been more and more considered an avoidable activity, given to those who reach the distant public transportation hubs not being able to afford a private car. After all, what can a city that non-linearly expands (leapfrog), offer to the walker? The non-continuity of construction lots, due to the search for cheaper land, determines unattainable distances without the necessary functions for those who cross them on foot. (Fig. 3) The building, not having such an immediate context to refer to, becomes introverted, forgetting to be an addition to the built environment. It misses behaving like an organism that establishes spatial relations with the surrounding architecture. In this light, the limit of the lot is not an occasion for dialogue or mediation, but an impassable border between the built and the surrounding tabula rasa. The width of the most important roads, which can reach 14 lanes, determines a further separation between various districts. In many cases, these infrastructures are impossible to overcome for those who cross on foot. At the Sheik Zayed Road, subway stops, pedestrian bridges have been placed to provide users with crossing opportunities. However, for the remaining length of this critical urban axis, the city is separated into two pedestrianly impassable areas. (Fig. 4) Thus, considering both climatic and urban factors, will Dubai ever be considered a Walk-In City? Maybe not, but surely, in the last few years, something is changing. "You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator nascitur, non fit." H. D. Thoreau, The relationship between man and his de-ambulation, goes back to the beginning of human history, but what interests us is the experience and meaning of walking in the urban environment. "It was walking by that man began to construct the natural landscape of his surroundings. Moreover, in our century, we have formulated the categories for interpreting the urban landscapes that surround us by walking through them. (1) The act of walking, as an instrument of knowledge and as "aesthetic practice," is primarily linked to the physical notion of speed. Paul Virilio coins the term "Dromology," a perceptual state influenced by the union between space and speed dimensions. In "The Aesthetics of Disappearance" (2), he examines the great influence speed has on contemporary society and how it contributes to obscure the understanding of its surrounding context. It is in the slow "wandering" that one gains access to an accurate perception of the built environment to which one has no contact if faster means of transport are involved. According to Calcatinge (3), we, contemporary men, become "victims of speed, being captivated by our movement which is perturbed only by the apparition of a symbol, a marker of the territory we pass through." Calcatinge continues, "The architectural and urban structure of a space has to be thought not just through spatiality but also connected to time as movement in space appeals to memory and experience. "Instead, the crossing of the metropolitan territories at walking speed allows, also, to foster social contact, the perception of the small scale space, its details, and its materials. It allows an experience of the environment that involves more senses beyond just sight. "Just walking, without rush, without any set purpose, makes the town look a little as it might have looked to one seeing it for the first time. With no focus on anything, in particular, everything is offered in abundance: colors, details, shapes, aspects. Strolling, walking alone and without purpose, restores that vision. […] One can plunder the streets delicately like that for ages." (4) The urban space is an "Objective Passional Terrain," the surrealists used to say. Andre Breton wrote in 1924: "The street was believed to be causing surprising turning-points in my life, the street, with its restlessness and its glances, it was my true element: there, as in no other place, I received the winds of eventuality." (5). Urban design must always consider the velocity with which its users experience it. The development of Dubai, intimately connected to the use of automobiles, has determined the scale of a context that is, in most cases, gigantic and detached from the human scale, both in its buildings and, historically, in its "public" spaces. It is the iconic dimension that prevails in the design of these urban components. In its representation, the building finds its raison d'etre in conveying a social imaginary that is useful to the capitalist forces financing its construction. However, if this design approach was true in the golden age of Dubai's development - i.e., between the end of the ''80s and the financial crisis of 2008-09 - different design strategies can be identified nowadays. (6) They aim at designing urban "public" spaces as a promoter of real estate interest. It is the new offer of recreational/commercial pedestrian areas to have a great success and to become, especially in winter months, privileged leisure destinations. Traditional retail malls, real indoor substitutes of western public spaces, are flanked by new functional centralities that promote the absence of vehicular traffic as their primary urban characteristic. One of the first districts which offered an exclusively pedestrian connective tissue was DIFC. The Dubai International Financial Center, built as a world-class business hub halfway between New York and Hong Kong, spreads over an area of 110 hectares. It hosts a series of various functions but specializes in commercial ones. While the ground level is mainly dedicated to the circulation of cars, drop-offs, and the entrance to parking garages, on the elevated 'lobby's level, the circulation is exclusively pedestrian. This elevated "city ground" houses all the supporting functions for the offices: restaurants, grocery stores, gyms, and retail outlets, which are connected by both open and indoor passages to be used in the hottest months. It is a specialized "public" urban space conveniently separated from the street level and, therefore, accessible only by a specific class of users. By the coast, the landscape design of Kite Beach is an essential public infrastructural project for 'Dubai's waterfront. It develops for about 8 km providing leisure facilities to the vast beach following the model of Californian waterfronts. Kite Beach is nowadays the most important beach in Dubai and a venue for events that gather thousands of people. (Fig. 5) In the southernmost part of the city, Dubai Marina has foreseen the doubling of the waterfront using a canal parallel to the coast 3km long. Also, here, the access is pedestrian-only. The "public" space covers a total of 12% of the entire area and is supported by a plethora of entertainment functions positioned along with its complete extension. Dubai Marina is the metropolitan area with the most volumetric density, and the available land consumption is close to saturation. One of the most substantial typological transformations of the shopping mall (a typical element of Dubai's urban and consumerist landscape) happens at "The Beach." It is the waterfront parallel to Marina. The Jumeirah Beach Residence already offered "The walk," a 1.7km commercial strip that has been in operation since 2008. In front of it, "The Beach," opened in 2014 and with an area of 320000 sqft, is the first outdoor shopping mall in the city. It maintains the elements of circulation and functional distribution of its indoors predecessors, with the addition of a "public" waterfront. "The Beach" demonstrated the economic sustainability of a mainly outdoor commercial offer in Dubai. (Fig. 6) It has dispelled the myth that saw the need to build well-conditioned internal spaces to operate all year round. Although the level of turnout in the summer months significantly drops, its success in the remaining period of the year opened the way to similar projects in the city. The big real estate groups have already understood the potentialities of the "new" pedestrian urban spaces, and the most prestigious residential projects foresee previously unknown components of "public" open spaces. All new schemes along the creek, such as the Culture village or the Dubai Creek Harbor, are structured on footpaths facing the waterway. The extension of the Dubai canal, which now connects Business Bay to the Gulf, provides pedestrian paths that become the real catalysts of real estate investments both in terms of "stunning views" and access to "public" amenities. These pedestrian paths provide Wi-Fi connection and electrical sockets to charge mobile phones. This way, they become "urban destination" before the construction of the surrounding functions could activate and support their use. The potential of pedestrian areas is also driving the design of recent urban densification projects such as Al Seef and La Mer. The stretch of the creek that goes from the Al Fahidi Historic District to the Palace of the Sheikh Ahmed, Emir of Qatar historically destined to Dhows (traditional boats) mooring is converted to leisure and free time destination consisting of two distinct areas. The first is spread over an area of over 100,000 sqm. It provides hotels, F&B, and retail. Its architecture is a contemporary interpretation of the historic buildings facing the creek. The second proposes a picturesque historical architecture design that stretches for almost 2 kilometers. (Fig. This part of Al Seef is a critical formal extension of the Al Fahidi district, although its planimetric design is quite different. The narrow streets of the original core of Bur Dubai, so-called Sikka, are not functional for contemporary use; therefore, the connective spaces between buildings take on historically unknown enlarged dimensions. A critical reading would define this project as a "historical fraud," given the use of elements borrowed from the characteristics of the vernacular architecture of Dubai without an adequate interpretative key and with the use of artificially aged finishes and materials. (Fig. 7) La Mer spreads over a massive area of 1.24 million sqm and is located north of Kite Beach, on an area in the past called "Open Beach." Also, here, the "public space" is pedestrian and serves as a functional filter between the beach and the seafront villas. The low-scale retail and F&B offer a village perception with the beach sand creeping between buildings through careful and environmentally sustainable landscape design. The offer of public amenities is vast and includes residences and yet another water park that protrudes into the ocean. Concluding the analysis of the most critical walking spaces of recent construction, one must mention perhaps the most successful that is also the only one not close to the water. The aptly named "City walk" covers an area of 53,000 sqm and is located at the height of downtown Dubai between Sheik Zayed Road and Jumeirah. A mix of functions supports a large residential project, and its masterplan is based on a pedestrian axis oriented towards the Burj Khalifa. The masterplan has foreseen the creation of two public spaces, a bigger one that hosts the main events and a more intimate one dedicated exclusively to F&B. They are positioned at the extremities of the complex and operate as functional anchors inviting to a "coming and going." Outdoor restaurants and cafes tables flank them. This scenario is very similar to the characteristic "strolling" that takes place in the centers of European cities. "City Walk" is noteworthy because it is preferred above all by the local population, who took the opportunity and adopted, apparently without any difficulty, a new way of enjoying open "public" spaces. (Fig. 8) Indeed, Dubai is becoming a Walk-in City. Although with its specific prerogatives. For example, the adjective "public" in this text has always been used with quotation marks. The reason must be sought in the singularity of the term applied to a city like Dubai. In truth, the notion of "public space," as understood by Western democracies, about the idea of "Free-space," does not exist in the emirate. The best definition instead would be "POPOS," "privately owned public open spaces." (7) All the projects described above are of private property and management, and consequently, their use obeys to a well-communicated written code. The prominent private character of these spaces is reminded by security officers who punctually repeat the mantra "It is not allowed" as soon as the rules are violated. We should, instead, remember that "the free space is the place of individual functions that expressed collectively become public. Free space is, thus, the summation of multiple contributions, which, expressed in space/time dimension, represent a fundamental part of the urban locus." (8) in this light, Dubai is a real example of "contemporary city of the thousand prohibitions and private spaces, strenuously defended and impenetrable" to that part of society that does not align with the level of consumerism auspicated by the developers. The real public space "is a rare and precious resource and frequently coincides with the unplanned space. It is, in fact, potentially, the place of the unexpected and the original creativity. It is the place of unpredicted (good or bad) surprises." The open and pedestrian areas of Dubai offer anything that can be expected from a glamorous turbo-capitalist society, but they lack unexpected events, of the not-designed emotion. Quoting Henry David Thoreau again: "At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. Only if it will be partitioned into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will be to the public road, and walking over the surface of the gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is to exclude yourself from the real enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days as ". (9) It was foreseeable that, someday, it would have happened.

1) Careri, Francesco. Walkscapes. Walking as an aesthetic practice. Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2009.

2) Virilio, Paul. The Aesthetics of Disappearance. MIT Press, Boston, 2009.

3) Calcatinge, Alexandru. The Need for a Cultural Landscape Theory: An Architect's Approach. LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2012.

4) Gros, Frédéric. A Philosophy of Walking. Verso, 2015

5) Breton, André. The Lost Steps. University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

6) Luchetti, Cristiano. The end of iconism. www.commercialinteriordesign.com/insight/the-end-of-iconism

7) Kayden, Jerold. Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience. John Wiley & Sons. 2000

8) Luchetti Cristiano, El Mashtooly Islam, Abouzaid Mouaz. Roba Becciah: The Informal City. Cairo: National Organization for Urban Harmony - Egyptian Academy in Rome, 2018.

9) Thoreau, H. David. Walking. Cosimo, Inc., 2006.