AL LAHBAB - A CASE STUDY ON THE PERI-URBANITY OF DUBAI

STUDENTS: AKHILA GIRIJAN, AASHIKA SHIBU

Lahbab, also spelled Lehbab, is a village in the Emirate of Dubai,about 50 km south of Dubai city. It is situated on the highway between Dubai and the border of the Emirate of Sharjah. It has a population of approximately 1,000 people. The village residents are wealthy Bedouins that are close friends to the royal family of Dubai. The main activity is camel breeding and raising.

Lahbab does not have well developed tertiary roads that connect the different regions of Lahbab 1 and Lahbab 2. Furthermore, there is no consideration given to pedestrian level pathways as of now. It would be impossible to live comfortably in Lahbab without owning vehicles. Residents mainly consist of locals working for the government and their families. Residences are owned by locals. They are not densely occupied as these are mainly used as weekend getaway houses.

Lahbab mainly consists of fields and animal breeding centres . These cover majority of Lahbab. Built spaces consist only of 3 residential zones and scattered single story houses for the workers. Majority of the fields are date palm groves. Rest of the fields grow turnips, radishes, salad leaves etc. It can be observed that Lahbab 1 mainly consists of fate palm groves whereas Lahbab 2 mainly consist of other plantation fields.

Since this region is not supported by much retail and institutional activities, there are barely any other services or residents there. Hence, there are vast amounts of vacant spaces available for possible future interventions that can accommodate more residents, expats and integrate more supporting functions that can serve Al Lahbab.

Morphologically, it is noticed that every residential district has a central square that consists of a mosque and usually a park/playground or basketball court that serves its residents. Around this central zone would be residential compounds. On the outskirts there would be farms of dates, other crops or sometimes animal breeding.

The residents in different villas of the community are usually family, relatives or extended families. In the specific villa that we looked into, there was the man of the house, his 2 wives and his children. The man is a local Arab who worked in the Dubai Police. The villas next to his house belonged to his close relatives. Apart from that, in the worker’s housing, there are about 4-5 expats including cooks, tailors, cleaners and drivers. This housing is usually divided into male and female sectors. There is a car park separating the two housings. Around the main housing, there is a lot of space that is usually treated as a play area for kids or outdoor majlis for the adults.

It was noticed that the proportion of the population at Lahbab was almost equal as there were the same number of locals as well as expats in one household in the luxury housing zone. For the other two residences, there were mostly expats as they were the workers or managers of the farms.