Dubai needs to be about more than trophy towers and mega-structures if it wants to attract inward investment.
That was the view from a panel of experts at Estates Gazette’s first Global Real Estate Debate, staged in partnership with Cluttons in the United Arab Emirates this week.
The emirate is spending more than £5bn on infrastructure in the run-up to hosting Expo 2020, but a host of the UAE’s top property professionals said this would not be enough to solve the region’s problems.
Hazel Wong, executive director at WSW Architects, said: “Iconic buildings need to be sustainable. We need to slow down and make sure [buildings] are sustainable. There has to be more pedestrian space. We just have building after building and it can get a bit chaotic. There should be more control.”
Anita Mehra, Dubai Airport’s vice-president for marketing and corporate communications, said the emirate had done much to improve health and education services, helping to bring investors back to the region.
“People around us see Dubai as a safe haven,” she said. “I think you will see more and more people moving here to live and to set up businesses.”
Khaled Ahmed, senior vice-president for planning, strategy and development at Economic Zones World, said one of the key areas Dubai needed to work on was switching from being a country with a transient population to one that expats considered home.
Steve Morgan, chief executive of Cluttons Middle East, said the region was becoming a force to be reckoned with in the global business economy.
“The foundations of the UAE becoming a business capital of the world have been in place for almost 40 years,” he said. “Geographically, we are positioned perfectly as a business hub for Africa and the Middle East and, with improved banking regulations and legal frameworks, the UAE can become the business capital of the world in the next 10 to 20 years.”
Listen to the debate at wordpress.egi.co.uk/news/firms-to-flock-to-uae
