Arabian Business 09/17

FIRST WORD | JEREMY LAWRENCE
Q SUCCESS IN DUBAI WILL DEPEND ON THE
INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE THINGS IT BUILDS AND
THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE BEST USE OF THEM”
Welcome to the city of the future
Why the Expo 2020 legacy plans have a great chance
of succeeding
u Dubai District 2020 The ambitious Expo legacy plans fit into a wider strategy for the city’s future
PREPARING FOR EXPO 2020 WILL
quite rightly be a huge focus
for Dubai over the next three
years. As a boost for tourism,
a pretext for upgrading
infrastructure and a vehicle to
showcase the city to the world,
the opportunity is golden.
Of more long-term
importance, however, is
what happens when the last
visitors leave the site and
it’s time to repurpose a very
large space on the outskirts
of town. As revealed in this
week’s cover story, there
are solid plans to create a
knowledge and lifestyle hub
on the site: the succinctly
named District 2020. If those
concepts bear fruit, the
scheme will tick many useful
boxes in terms of providing
jobs and homes for the next
wave of UAE inhabitants.
But there’s a bigger play at
work that brings to mind a
book published back in 2011.
Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll
Live Next speculated what
cities of the future will look
like. “A combination of giant
airport, planned city, shipping
facility and business hub...”
the cover jacket grandly
asserts, “...the aerotropolis
will be at the heart of the next
phase of globalisation.”
The similarities between
that vision and the Expo site
hardly need spelling out. Jebel
Ali is home to the biggest
port in the Middle East; Al
Maktoum Airport is set to be
the world’s busiest airport,
and District 2020 is right
there in the mix. In fact, it all
seemed so closely aligned that
it prompted me to phone the
Q A COMBINATION OF
GIANT AIRPORT, PLANNED
CITY, SHIPPING FACILITY
AND BUSINESS HUB, THE
AEROTROPOLIS WILL BE
AT THE NEXT HEART OF
THE NEXT PHASE OF
GLOBALISATION”
book’s co-author, Greg Lindsay.
A senior fellow of the New
Cities Foundation, Lindsay
was also part of an early planning
workshop for Expo 2020.
The logic is simple, he tells
me. We think of the modern
world as being about digital
transactions and the frictionless
movement of data or
ideas. In actual fact, physical
stuff can only move on a
global scale via the air and
sea. And it’s the same for the
people who bring with them
ideas and energy. It’s boots on
the ground, basically.
Catering to this demand
has already allowed Dubai to
become a logistics hub for the
Gulf and also large swathes
of sub-Saharan Africa and
the wider MENA region. The
city has become, as Lindsay
describes, “the crossroads of
the entire Global South.”
Of course Dubai isn’t
alone in positioning itself as
a hub for goods and services.
Schiphol in Amsterdam is
Europe’s flagship model,
thanks to its strategic development
around the airport.
South Korea, Hong Kong and
Singapore have all raised their
profiles by doing the same.
Less prominently, but no
less interesting, around half
of the world’s iPhones are
made in Zhengzhou, thanks
to Chinese infrastructure
investment. Manchester,
meanwhile, is busy positioning
itself as the entry point
for post-Brexit international
investment into the UK.
Lindsay says that the ones
who boast the loudest usually
have the least best reasons for
doing so, while the best ones
just quietly go ahead and get
things done. Which brings us
back to Dubai.
District 2020 will be a huge
success in the long-term if
it harnesses the potential of
DWC and JAFZA. More immediately,
however, it needs to
provide more than shops and
offices for its plans to succeed.
It’s not an easy task, as
Shanghai discovered, though
its Expo site has started to
succeed as an arts district.
Success in Dubai will depend
on the interplay between the
things it builds and the people
who make best use of them.
So in the end it’s not about
cargo, it’s attracting people
who come as a result.
To return to the cover jacket
of that book, it continues:
“In our ‘flat world’, connecting
people and goods is still as
important as digital communication....
The aerotropolis
will be not just a powerful
engine for local economic
development, but also a whole
new international forum for
ideas and innovation.”
Which should make Dubai
District 2020 a very interesting
place to watch. a
6 Vol. 18/30, September 2017