Dubailand – Dubai Update 4.

I’ve been so busy with travel lately that I haven’t had time to update this blog. Here are the last few posts from my notes on Dubai, before I move on with documenting the rest of my travels. After a full morning at Wafi City Mall, I took a long cab ride beyond the edge of the bustling city to the fringes of the desert, where the massive Dubailand parcel lies.

And by massive, I mean three billion square feet (278 km² / 107 mile²)—a site that will include 45 mega projects and 200 sub-projects. There’s not much out there right now, save for a snazzy visitor’s center chocked full of concept art and scale models—but once the four initial phases are completed sometime between 2015 and 2018, Dubailand will be twice the size of Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida. Think about that for just a moment. Disney World is the largest private recreational property in the world, and it spans 47 square miles—about the size of San Francisco, or twice the size of Manhattan. Dubailand will be just over twice that size—107 square miles.

Everything sounded like so much marketing and developer hype as I read about it before leaving for my Dubai trip, but once I arrived at the visitor’s center and had a look at the impressive masterplan model (which took up its own entire room), I was a believer. True, the only thing moving about Dubailand right now (late spring, 2008) are the scores of heavy equipment pushing dirt around, but what is planned—and what major entertainment corporations from all over the world have pledged to invest billions in—is unprecedented, and it is the future of ThemericaEveryone from Dreamworks to Universal to Marvel to Busch Gardens to Six Flags have signed on.

What distinguishes Dubailand from other such projects—besides its sheer, unnerving scale—are two key concepts that began with Walt Disney World in Florida: the privatization of governing bodies (through  WDW's Reedy Creek Improvement District), and the extension of thematic design across multi-use developments. Disney World was, in effect, the merging of traditional modern urban planning with the immersive philosophy of theming—and all of it effectively privatized. Instead of merely controlling the visitor’s experience within an attraction, or a land, or a park, the control—and seamless unifying aesthetic—is manifested at even the infrastructural level. Walt grabs hold of you the minute you set foot in WDW, and your experience is a completely holistic (and Disney) one until the moment you leave the property.

The semi-autonomous status of Disney World has been troubling to commentators for years, who note that in an effort to provide Florida with a massive influx of tax revenue and jobs, state and local officials gave Disney practically everything they asked for. Amazingly, the company even has the right to build and operate its own nuclear power plant on the site—a right, like every other granted to Disney, that exists in perpetuity.

Dubai, however, is not a democracy by any stretch, and thus governance within the Dubailand complex is not likely to be an issue for its development (Sheikh Mohammed, ruler of Dubai, holds 99.67% of  the company that owns and will operate Dubailand). Most interesting is the emphasis on multi-use; landowners will be able to live within Dubailand, and thus live fully within the walls of a thematic environment.

Dubailand will include theme parks, hotels and resorts, entertainment complexes, golf courses, shopping venues, and commercial properties in addition to residential spaces in the form of luxury villas, smaller housing plots and higher-density apartments. The entire project plays with the traditional role of zoning—which separates land according to use to better balance overall property values.

What will life be like living in Dubailand? Where shopping, entertainment, sports, leisure and shopping are blended together into a single immersive environment, unified by the principles of thematic design? I would be very interested to return in ten years to find out.