If more people are destined to live in towering high-rise apartments, greater importance must be placed on the spaces in between, architects say.
Families living in blocks of flats rather than villas or townhouses have limited access to outdoor space, so the alleyways, parks, squares, patios and pavements that surround them - what planners refer to as the public realm - take on a more significant role that should help to create a sense of community.
George Katodrytis, associate professor of architecture at the American University of Sharjah, says too much emphasis has been placed on what buildings look like, on their façades. As a result, the public realm has been neglected.
The effect this has on a city, he says, is that people are able only to live in the city, not to truly inhabit it. Streets and pavements become a means to an end, never destinations in themselves.
"You need to be able to experience casual activity in a public landscape," he says. "If planners don't? see the city as a dynamic field of interaction, the city won't work entirely as a social space."
Comparing rapidly expanding cities such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai with established places such as Paris may not be fair, but vibrant streets like the Champs-Elysées are destinations for pedestrians, not just for shoppers.
The street's wide pavements, the old trees that line it, the numerous benches, cafes with patios and shops amount to it being more than a way to move through the city. The Champs-Elysées has become a place - not just a street - where people want to be. Mr Katodrytis says the UAE needs to do more to create urban spaces like that.
Richard Wagner, an architect with Dubai-based DXB-Lab and vice president of the Architectural Association of the UAE, says all hope should not be lost. Both Abu Dhabi and Dubai are still early enough in their modernisation to develop vibrant public realms.
"As a pedestrian, you can only move so far. Once distances become too great you require other means of transportation," he says. "One solution would be to give the city a chance to grow on a pedestrian scale."
The way to accomplish that was to employ infill programmes - a means of reinvigorating underused urban space, usually by creating small businesses and outdoor recreation centres and rehabilitating historic buildings for new uses.
Such change, Mr Wagner says, must come from the authorities and large-scale developers.
How pedestrians interact with the urban landscape is predictable. People will naturally seek a short cut when walking. That happens organically, though the built environment has to be conducive to it.
"There needs to be an understanding that even though rigid planning may seem to be the key ?. It can easily backfire and kill the basic idea of a city by being too limiting."
Mr Katodrytis says that while the authorities have a responsibility to direct development, architects are largely to blame for seeing their projects in a vacuum.
"There is a tendency among architects to see their buildings as a self-preferential expression of themselves, without a wider context," he says. "There needs to be a collective awareness that makes the city relate to what happens on the ground. Many of Dubai's skyscrapers relate more to the sky than to the street."
Jean Philippe Coulaud, a spokesman for the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, says that under the Abu Dhabi Plan 2030, communal space is given as much priority as individual buildings, with additional park space and gardens included in the plans.
Mr Katodrytis says part of the trouble with top-down creation of communal space is that it does not allow for the organic evolution of an area to meet the needs of the people who use it. He says the alleys behind Dubai's gold souq are the city's most successful area.
"It's not beautiful; it's dirty, unpredictable, messy, but it's interesting," he says. "The area has been allowed the time to change with the spontaneous will of the people. It feels like a real culture. When you're there, you feel like you are participating in real public space."
jhume@thenational.ae
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The alternatives
• Founded in 2014, Telr is a payment aggregator and gateway with an office in Silicon Oasis. It’s e-commerce entry plan costs Dh349 monthly (plus VAT). QR codes direct customers to an online payment page and merchants can generate payments through messaging apps.
• Business Bay’s Pallapay claims 40,000-plus active merchants who can invoice customers and receive payment by card. Fees range from 1.99 per cent plus Dh1 per transaction depending on payment method and location, such as online or via UAE mobile.
• Tap started in May 2013 in Kuwait, allowing Middle East businesses to bill, accept, receive and make payments online “easier, faster and smoother” via goSell and goCollect. It supports more than 10,000 merchants. Monthly fees range from US$65-100, plus card charges of 2.75-3.75 per cent and Dh1.2 per sale.
• 2checkout’s “all-in-one payment gateway and merchant account” accepts payments in 200-plus markets for 2.4-3.9 per cent, plus a Dh1.2-Dh1.8 currency conversion charge. The US provider processes online shop and mobile transactions and has 17,000-plus active digital commerce users.
• PayPal is probably the best-known online goods payment method - usually used for eBay purchases - but can be used to receive funds, providing everyone’s signed up. Costs from 2.9 per cent plus Dh1.2 per transaction.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
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UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The major Hashd factions linked to Iran:
Badr Organisation: Seen as the most militarily capable faction in the Hashd. Iraqi Shiite exiles opposed to Saddam Hussein set up the group in Tehran in the early 1980s as the Badr Corps under the supervision of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The militia exalts Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but intermittently cooperated with the US military.
Saraya Al Salam (Peace Brigade): Comprised of former members of the officially defunct Mahdi Army, a militia that was commanded by Iraqi cleric Moqtada Al Sadr and fought US and Iraqi government and other forces between 2004 and 2008. As part of a political overhaul aimed as casting Mr Al Sadr as a more nationalist and less sectarian figure, the cleric formed Saraya Al Salam in 2014. The group’s relations with Iran has been volatile.
Kataeb Hezbollah: The group, which is fighting on behalf of the Bashar Al Assad government in Syria, traces its origins to attacks on US forces in Iraq in 2004 and adopts a tough stance against Washington, calling the United States “the enemy of humanity”.
Asaeb Ahl Al Haq: An offshoot of the Mahdi Army active in Syria. Asaeb Ahl Al Haq’s leader Qais al Khazali was a student of Mr Al Moqtada’s late father Mohammed Sadeq Al Sadr, a prominent Shiite cleric who was killed during Saddam Hussein’s rule.
Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba: Formed in 2013 to fight alongside Mr Al Assad’s loyalists in Syria before joining the Hashd. The group is seen as among the most ideological and sectarian-driven Hashd militias in Syria and is the major recruiter of foreign fighters to Syria.
Saraya Al Khorasani: The ICRG formed Saraya Al Khorasani in the mid-1990s and the group is seen as the most ideologically attached to Iran among Tehran’s satellites in Iraq.
(Source: The Wilson Centre, the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation)
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The National Archives, Abu Dhabi
Founded over 50 years ago, the National Archives collects valuable historical material relating to the UAE, and is the oldest and richest archive relating to the Arabian Gulf.
Much of the material can be viewed on line at the Arabian Gulf Digital Archive - https://www.agda.ae/en
The Limehouse Golem
Director: Juan Carlos Medina
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Bill Nighy, Douglas Booth
Three stars
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Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
Directed by Sam Mendes
Starring Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Daniel Mays
4.5/5
