It's so stupid that they have ignored all the historic knowledge of how to live in the desert. And they don't even have solar power on those bridges, right? Even though that would be self-regulated energy system: The more sun, the more cooling need but also the more solar electricity.
That's the blindness induced by the bling of new technology. The kids (current generations), always think they know better than their "outdated" parents (ancestors).
@@thomasgrabkowski8283 Of course. But basic principles - creating shadows and shaded alleys, white paint etc. are still true. Putting up full-glass fassades is so stupid on so many levels... (who wants to sit there inside the building, getting burned by the sun?? Computer screens hard so see and so on.)
They absolutely use solar energy. Just type in “MBR Solar” on Google maps and you’ll see one of the largest solar parks in the world just outside the city.
@@LeoPlaw tbf most of them do. The boomer generation are some of the most ill informed, ignorant cretins out there. They have no fcuking idea about anything, but they seem to think they do. And last I checked the people who created Dubai aren't gen Zers.
Another thing to mention too: UAE has a problem beyond the extreme heat: extreme humidity. This is why traditionally, the locals lived in places like Al Ain, rather than Abu Dhabi or Dubai, which were fishing/ pearling spots. Places like Al Ain had drinking water and were far dryer, making them more hospitable
As a Local this is false. Historically locals left Alain 9 months of the year and moved towards abu dhabi dubai and other coastal cities due to the heat
What do you expect the city to be? Its in the middle of the desert with an average temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. Of course it’s going to be all artificial. Dubai is the example of a city that is better and safer than all of the cities in America combined.
Those ai generated images depicting what Dubai could have been were incredible. Imagine if the UAE had built a city specific to their own culture and people instead of trying to appeal to the world. The people and culture are the soul of a city which I wish the government had cared more about. Arabian architecture is so beautiful. I loved the Ai image of the underground metro too, It was a very nice modern/futuristic touch. I hope those ideas will be implemented to that degree of beauty somewhere in the future.
Exactly. There’s so much potential, they could have built a splendid city but now they try to imitate whatever architect’s fever dream is fashionable at the moment. The city looks like they just ordered large corporations and architecture firms to build them a city according to current principles without much further thought if it was the best or most future proof way to build
i think some small areas look hella fine. around burj kahlifa for example, where they got the pretty lake, parks, mid rise urban fabric with arabic feel to it and some modern art deco skyscrapers in the background. But if you see the city as a whole it´s all a big mess
Their idea is working more well than the one you have, in terms of generating revenue from tourism, it's just that they overdid some things and the consequences are exaggerated because of the city's size and fame.
That’s not entirely fair though. The reason Dubai gained fame in the first place was because it appealed to the very tourists they sought to attract. There was a demand for what Dubai is now today and they Emiratis met that demand. The fact of the matter is the UAE faced an existential crisis. With oil only expected to last another couple hundred years (and less than a hundred in the gulf) and other countries rapidly developing and undercutting their own industry as new deposits are discovered the only thing they could have done was rapidly build a city to quickly change their business model. Now that it has worked I perfectly agree that change is needed if the city wants to survive but the problem required a near immediate solution so you can’t fault them for the route they took (you can fault the unethical working standards but that’s not what I’m trying to defend)
Props for actually going there and visiting it before spouting out opinions on the internet. That's not an easy thing to do, but I really appreciate it when it happens!
Dubai represents human greed and excess in its worst, most vulgar form. Ironic given how it's illegal to drink alcohol in public. I'll admit I've never been there....but at the same time, have no desire to go there at all. Mind destroying place with no authenticity. They could have created a beautiful new city...but instead just built soaring ugly concrete towers, with eight lane highways going through the middle. Too much like that 'Bladerunner' city, but without the rain. Even places like Las Vegas have an authentic nature and an intriguing history. Dubai has none of this. It sorely lacks Las Vegas's unpredictable nature, its energy and pizzazz, or its unique history.
I don't think it's true look at Alexandria Egypt despite having a more traditional city layout it's one of the ugliest cities and the quality of life there is about 100 times worse.
@@BariNapach thanks for your response. I meant that rich cities nowadays dont build nuch attractive and beautiful as much as they used to do, when nowadays with modern technologies we can do it easier.
For such a car-centric society, it amazes me how incoherent their road layout is. It's like their urban planners had no foresight for consistency in wayfinding, instead relying on "just one more flyover, bro".
4:00 The London School of Economics revealed in a recent study that on average low taxes do not attract millionaires, how to attract them is making an attractive place to live. As you said clean streets etc. It is why the UK in the 1960s which was centre of art and culture in the world had a huge influx of millionaires even though the top rate of tax was 97%. Now the actual tax rate received was lower, however well over double and some estimate show it at triple what is reciebed today. That is why the Uk was a world leader in research and development, the streets were clean and money could be put back into the arts attracting more people.
I love that. All the more reason to tax the super rich even more. Put that money back into liveable cities. Make sure small businesses don't fail and people don't end up homeless so the streets will continue to be attractive. Make them invest in the space they too want to live in. Check out Gary Stevenson, he's an ex trader from the same LSE advocating for this, especially in the UK.
The gulf countries ignoring and not innovating on native architectural and city philosophies is a depressing reality about modern Middle Eastern times.
@AL-lh2ht I see when you mean, but that's not exactly what I'm getting at. I'm hoping for something more bold and inspired as opposed to rich Gulf cities treating turning into another skyscraper fest as a standard for becoming a great city. It's a lot more infuriating when taking into account how actual historical heritage is neglected by them, as if such states only started becoming worthwhile after getting oil or natural gas.
Thank you for making this video! It's one of the more level headed ones I've seen on this platform. As a resident and a student, the car centric-ness of this city is the bane of my student life. I use the metro and bus system for my commute and the capacity is not matching with the growing population. Even worse when you live near Sharjah where the end of day traffic lasts well into the night. The Blue Line of the metro is hopefully on the way which connects the green line to Mirdif and neighboring areas but I still feel like they need to address the conjestion from Business Bay to Union Station. Changing portions of the highway underground and turning them into walkable parks is definitely a good idea! I would love it if the city did that along with more dedicated bus lanes that they started to implement. Life is comfy here (as far as my introverted, hangout averse self goes) but the city planning here has lots to be desired.
It's disgusting how Dubai had the opportunity and resources to design one of the world's most beautiful, pedestrian-friendly and well served by excellent mass transit cities on the planet and instead they recreated Houston.
Indeed, even Doha is more walkable now that they built out their metro network. The Dubai Metro is seriously undersized and its style-first feel makes it seem like it was originally a pet project rather than a serious alternative to the car.
"pedestrian-friendly" buddy has no idea you get heat stroke if you try to walk outside for more then ten minutes. Then again why should we be surprised a bigot knows nothing about why other people do things differently.
I feel it's important to mention that they are starting to realize all this, They're already building a metro expansion with a lot more coming after that one as well as connecting areas that are disconnected by highways. The issue is more societal than government at this point as doing anything outside of a car is just not even in the thought process. Changes are happening though, road redesigns usually include alternative forms of transport and bike lanes. Change is happening and that's always good
I've been here for a decade now and that's to the point. Dubai is often judged for what it is, but a fairer evaluation in its context is a judgment on what it achieved in that short time, and its ambitions which are effectively very much in line with what is being presented as what they should do in the foreseeable future.
@@the_aesthetic_cityyou should do a video on how you would redesign cities. Maybe do a theoretical Haussmann/Burnham plan for LA. With AI art, it could look great!
I am not a Muslim or an Arab but I study history and many of the buildings in the past in the Middle East are very amazing, And now I am building my dream house in Asia with the concept of Middle Eastern buildings in the past.😊
4:00 this isn't actually true, millionaires are threatening to leave, but when all your wealth is tied up in assets, all they can do is make baseless threats as they always do. Unless they want to fire sale all their assets. Which even Russians banned from London have struggled to do.
UAE has the highest amount of millionaires moving to it in the world do a google search. I think you’re talking about billionaires not millionaires. Millionaires can sell up everything and move out in a couple of months
It is sad to see what Dubai became from when I was first there, well, not including 1996 as it was just a connecting flight, but in 1999. 2004 was good too. But with the wave of social media it's gone to hell.
I recently watched a video ahout Dubai by Arab basically talking about how amazing it is but not focusing on any of the negatives, and I thought that was very misleading. I love how this video is more objective with some valid opinions thrown in, like "a developed city is not one where the poor drive, but where the rich take public transportation". Love this channel, keep it up
They built everything from scratch, imagine if they had experimented with new ways of integrating both cars and walkable paths. Maybe they would have discovered better way to lay out the infrastructure for both.
This has been done in Milton Keynes and Stevenage. Car centric urbanism with plenty of walking and cycle paths. Historically that meant that people drove everywhere as it was so convenient. Now more people are cycling. Jay Foreman, in one of his videos, puts forward that convenient active travel needs to be paired with making driving inconvenient.
The renderings for the future "Arabic" Dubai look like something from a Star Wars prequal movie. But I love the passive cooling system using the Qanat. Humans have been very clever long before the industrial revolution and the high energy civilization created by fossil fuels. Thanks for highlighting that.
As someone who lived there for my entire life, it’s quite noticeable and sadly been ignored for soo many years until recently when it almost feels like it’s too late. I study architecture here and it’s been an important topic and our jobs is to create something that could save the city, and notice that i only said the city because funny enough the other cities have a more compact and more sustainable infrastructure unlike dubai, abudhabi in example has a more centreic design in the city where urban planning was way more focused on making sure people have all options to either walk or drive or use public transportation, same with sharjah and ajman which are also both same concept as abudhabi, while dubai just wanted to become the realstate and rich people paradise where everything is made to optimize profit and luxury then actually being an organic city with life, the solution exists, its just that dubai is was rush planned and didn’t care much about other things like sewage system or public transportation since their only goal was to look as shiny as possible, it been lately addressed and there are plans to build more metros and more urban centers fouced on making sure everyone is satisfied and sustainable for the future, but i think it’s probably too late for dubai unless they go full on demolising all existing urban sprawls and roads, which are highly unlikely…
speaking of actual thousand year old cities, take a look at Mecca. the holiest and one of the oldest cities in the world. its architecture doesn’t reflect that, plus its a bit strange how luxury hotels simply tower over the Kaaba. the vibe doesn’t match the lore.
Ask there countries leader's whom are trying to appese Western media and leader's by selling their culture 😅. Look at Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan modern and old blend which reflects their culture and silk road history
@@affan3095the point is to house million of pilgrims around le site of pilgrimage, a lot of whom are not rich, They could have built 100,000s low rise buildings around the city and expend its infrastructure exponentially or build high density high rise hotels. The latter is cheaper to build and commercialise. There’s what’s ideal and what’s realistic and financially viable / easier to implement on the short term. I would personally have preferred if the masjid al haram site was kept ´islolated’, with tourist only reaching the site by a well integrated smart public transportation.
Take a look at abudhabi city center, it was built way back in the 80s way before dubai even started doing the whole tourist stuff, the city is way well planned and there was an actual thoughts behind it, even people in dubai prefer abudhabi, sewage system and public transportation and walkablity and underground highways so it doesn’t create huge separation in between neighborhoods, and also future plans for metros and trams that actually surve people to go from place to another, I don’t think dubai will do good in future but this city definitely will.
@@AL-lh2ht like Al Balad, Manama, Rijal Almaa, Esfahan or Shibam? Or ones that have been largely destroyed, like Diriyah, Petra, Babylon or Damascus? Are you one of those shitty modernist architects who want to destroy heritage and make every city in the world look exactly the same with glass and steel boxes? Can’t you guys fuck off and ruin somewhere else?
This was a fascinating subject, easy sub! Really cool that you went there and shot all this footage. Do wonder about your proposed solution though, what conditions are needed that someone will develop that 6-7 story urbanism with walkable areas... as like a new district? It's not flashy, but it does seem like that style is getting a lot of interest organically online. Guess we will have to see where Dubai is in 5 years, and will any of Saudi Arabia's projects like Jeddah Tower or Neom pull interest from it. Kinda all over the place with this comment lol but it's a very interesting subject
I appreciate the very clear and thoughtful encapsulation of the problems of Dubai, the manifestation of all that is wrong with modern city planning. I would add that they don't just need money and will, but also spirit and intelligence.
There is a model that made Dubai what it is today, and it's called private capital. So Dubai had no chance to become a compact city, because all the regions were developed and owned by different entities. The Dubai created by the government is just the Deira region, which is quite compact. However, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah, DIFC, Barsha Heights, and other areas were all privately developed regions. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, Dubai is not a unified project; it developed according to the business plans and spreadsheets of investors.
The anxient cooling system is so clever! And the old, genuine clay houses look so charming. And the options you presented were just what I would love to see. All those sky scrapers are so unfriendly and imposing. (- And what if there's a fire?!) I would *never ever* want to go to glitzy Dubay, the way it is now. Built for rhe rich at the expense of poor migrant workers with no insurance or unions. It's completely offputting. Give me instead the Old Suqs of Damascus and Aleppo, or the amazing traditional architecture of Yemen and Oman. Really anywhere with a genuine, regional style in local building materials.
Gustavo Petro didn’t say that phrase it was Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor that design transmilenio in Colombia and provoked the explosion or BRT world wide
Yes I saw someone here saying that - apologies as the quote is spread widely on the internet with credit to Petro. I can fix it in the subtitles probably
Happy to help! Midjourney 6.1: “aerial photo of a vast high density traditional Arabian city, 7 stories tall, lush streets, fountains, human scaled, haussmann urbanism meets Arabian Emirati traditional architecture, palm trees, green, domes and wind catchers, extreme population density, arabian liveable urbanism”
11:17 Petro is a bad example. I am from Colombia, he has prohibited colombian pezrol companies to extraxt oil and gas, as a result, ecopetrol now buys 30% of the gas to Venezuela (a dictatorship). Petro put colombians like me in a difficult position only to help a dictatorship
9:14 Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait & Singapore are city states. I think energy consumption per capita of the Cities of USA & Canada would be higher than the Arab Gulf City States.
Those images at 10:00 and further are AI generated? I'd love to see more videos what great cities could look like. Detailed. What Dubai could look like, perfect Paris, perfect LA, perfect Mexico city and so on. :-)
It indeed is. Although I often get criticism on using AI, I think it is useful for such use cases - just to give an idea of what it could be like! Looking cool right?
@@the_aesthetic_city There are only two major sections of people who opine about AI: people who have used it and who are convinced it's awesome tech, and people who haven't yet used it and who criticize its use. People who have used it but are still saying we shouldn't use AI are a tiny minority. I say that because AI is so useful for things like generating imagery and summarizing topics via LLMs (I am less optimistic about other uses, like generating novel research or genuine displays of intelligence), I almost don't understand how you can't be blown away by it.
@@ekszentrik It is actually dangerous because it will generate approximate pseudo architecture which will prevent people from learning about true style and building. You may think it's funny and obvious that everybody knows people do not have 6 fingers, but on complex topics AI impressions are dangerous methods that can give wildly deviating ideas to untrained observers. Further is not only what is wrong, but also what is trained on what is wrong the AI public data generation cascade.
@@TheSquidPro True. I guess I made my post actually under a different mental headspace: I personally use StableDiffusion to generate imagery that doesn't exist in the real world (in my example, characters with unconventional fashion), while in the video I was thinking "Ah, he uses it to generate images how a future Arab city with trad architecture could look like", which is likewise a "non-really existing thing". However, on reflection, the vid uploader was actually pretty lazy for not researching real world examples of modern Arab architecture to use as example (which is scarcely possible with my personal AI use). I agree, the pollution with AI content regarding things that actually exist is a massive issue. The only solution is training people that everything they see post-2023 is potentially AI.
I’ve come across many discussions about Dubai’s urban planning, but this is by far the most genuine study, critique, and advice I’ve seen. Most other content tends to fall into one of two extremes: either ‘Dubai is the greatest city on the planet’ or ‘The Middle East is bad, I’ve never been there and never will. Here’s me talking over a Google Street View image.’ While Dubai is certainly impressive, I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest in terms of urban planning. However, it’s definitely ahead of its neighboring countries, managing a large car-dependent population while keeping things running smoothly, it really is an achievement in itself.
Thank you! 🙏🏼 Yeah I tried to be fair but to also get my criticism and ideas across. And I’m also a bit disappointed by the “black & white” view in most videos about Dubai. Indeed, it is impressive to handle such a city but the problems they are handling skillfully now are problems they could have avoided - so although it is still impressive, it would have been even more impressive if they could have solved those problems ahead of time. In any case, I think expanding the metro would be the lowest hanging fruit for now, hope they will!
@@darksavage596From what I've seen, the Blue Line still won't include double-length trainsets that the Dubai Metro network desperately needs, nor will it reach demand centers like Global Village and Motor City.
Dubai looks like a fantastic sci-fi movie set... until people try to live in it. Few walkable streets, extreme heat, and endless traffic - it's a city built for cars, not people. When will they realize urban sprawl isn't the future? 🚗🌆 They seem to slowly get that they need to change something.
Awesome video! The AI pictures of what Dubai could be are so beautiful! If turned reality, it could compete with any European city in aesthetics. Adam Something made an interesting video about Dubai 20 minutes city. Which they’re claiming they’ll make Dubai more walkable and be more bike friendly than Amsterdam by 2040. Would it be awesome if you make a video about Rio de Janeiro. It’s very dense, walkable and lively city in its south zone, where hundreds of thousands live in. It also has a great and affordable rental bike infrastructure and much safer thank people may think. Thank you!
Dubai already died financially. Since the measures against money laundering they lost the real accelerator investments. They invest more abroad and try to repeat the "Dubai model" in several places around the world like Ras al-Hikma in Egypt.
There’s the typical jealous westerner who refuses to give any credit to the GCC countries. Enjoy your rampant crime and open drug markets in the US. At least Emiratis don’t have to worry about stepping in a homeless drug addicts feces while they’re on the way to get their morning coffee.
They abuse Filipino people like myself in that city!.!. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t want to visit that city!.!. The concept of Human Rights doesn’t exist in that city!.!.
Nice cover on Dubai. Have you been to Muscat? It still has the boundary highways of course but they keep the architecture adhering to the local climate and culture. Somehow it's not losing its sense of place. ❤
I’ve never been, so I must reserve judgement, but I spent some time in Bahrain and had the same complaints. Once it ceases to be fashionable, I fear Dubai’s metaphorical collapse will come quickly.
'Tis hard to figure why anyone would want to visit artificial and plastic Dubai when he could journey to the authentic, sustainable and exquisitely-managed cities of Kinshasa, Port-au-Prince, Lagos, Islamabad, N'Djamena, Dhaka, Khartoum and Sana'a. In the country of the latter, the Houthi Home Stays in the North are supposed to be heavenly. Not to be missed is Beirut, which has undergone a thorough process of decolonization over the last few years, and where one can currently enjoy the excitement of free fireworks' shows on a nightly basis.
It'll never happen. People would rather the whole thing dries up and blows away than be perceived as going backwards - no matter how forwards those solutions actually are. Dubai will barely exist in a century.
I remember having seen very interesting videos about Masdar. A city that was humane, nice to live in, and would use natural energy to be self sufficient. truly the dream
@@clemradio It still used high tech but it was a nice attempt. Solar power, underground electric public transport, no cars, passive cooling, locally sourced building materials, narrow streets, low rises, water recycling...
Seeing modern Dubai feels like the future, uplifting, and my heart beats faster. But would I want to live there? Uhm, no. Seeing the architecture built on the region's traditional architecture feels so enchanting and much more conducive to living there. Still, I wonder how the actual people living there would see it. Would it be perceived as clichéd Oriental, a Westerner's romanticized view of the Orient? I wonder.
I think many people just don't really care, as long as they are comfortable. They will probably like the spectacle and the views from the towers. But the moment something doesn't work anymore, it's done - and those people will leave.
@@the_aesthetic_city Well, there have been accusations that Westerners want to keep people from these countries in the past. Modern Dubai is a statement against that, and that is probably part of its attraction. But you are right, of course. If it's not comfortable and sustainable for people anymore, the city is done. What I liked most about the traditional style cities you showed was that they are actually car-free. A city to walk in - I truly love that. I also loved the quote about development being rich people using public transport.
I was done with Dubai having twice visited even before my office assigned me to there. I mainly went because of all the places I can go _from_ Dubai, although ironically I ended up flying competitors of Emirates because of how overpriced and tacky the EK experience has become.
First of all, great topic and good work. 👍 That being said, I have a few comments. 1) Could you please set a slower pace for the image swapping and also the spinning. I was struggling with nausea when trying to focus the view. 2) The tips on ‘ saving Dubai’ are very good, apart from the one with the metro. I never understood why the metro lines have to be weird shapes instead of a grid of lines which would work much better being more flexible. 3) I think it's too late to save Dubai. This video should have been watched before they built all this....
Very well balanced. It’s so nice to see someone highlight the cleanliness and fantastic service. It’s become trendy to hate on these cities, for all the reasons that have now become obvious. One more thing to note is that these places are an oasis in an extremely unstable Middle East. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo are all examples of old, traditional and ‘sustainable’ cities, which have been and will be around far longer than Dubai. But the past and far future do not matter when you want a good job, a place to raise your family and somewhere you can live in safety now and in the next 20 years. The Gulf states ARE an anomaly, but for the Arab world, they are a welcome one. Could they be better? Yes! But trust me, I have lived in these countries, and they could be far, far worse.
It was not Gustavo Petro who said it, but Enrique Peñalosa. Both were mayors of Bogotá and very much each other´s nemesis, and so it is ironic that the quote is often attributed to Petro.
It just shows that money and intelligence dont always go hand in hand. They may have billions maybe even trillions of dollars but they dont even know how to design a functional city.
To be fair, it's easier to say all this in hindsight when we can more clearly see the problems that it brings. Back when bad cities were being designed, it wouldn't have been as easy to see that.. you might've even liked the futuristic looks and being able to drive everywhere if you didn't have these UA-cam videos to learn about this. Urban planning is an ongoing study, and mostly relies on analysing existing planning because it has so many variables. Now that many cities have gone this route, we can analyse them over time and see how it "performs" and learn from them. The push to build more walkable and human scale cities is driving a change in how cities develop further. Just like any science, humanity experiments, analyses results and tries to learn and push the field. It's just that a field like urban planning is a lot slower to progress. My point is to try to think a bit more nuanced.. as they say things aren't just black and white
@@MrBsehratmaannking This whole thing was such a waste tho. Cities worked perfectly fine back then. Sure they werent perfect and had some flaws but overall they were pretty good since city design had thousands of years of experimentation and improvements. But then the modernists came and decided to completely reinvent the wheel for absolutely no reason. Why reinvent something that already works. What we shouldve done was to just improve upon the already existing city design principles. We keep thinking we are better and smarter than the people from the past which leads to us making these type of mystakes. The saying "Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It” fits perfectly to this topic.
No way that Maarten van Rossem supports you on Patreon, that's awesome! Now, regarding Dubai - I have no idea what it's like as I've never been there, but it does look overblown and overrated, in the same way that the average modernist and internationalist city in Qatar, Bahrain and now Saudi Arabia is trying to be. This stuff only works insofar they have money, but given the change of the environment, that'll eventually become unsustainable. It's like a worse version of Las Vegas. The Arabian world has more interesting places to be and it's an actual shame they didn't apply these practices instead of wasting time, space, money and resources on _this._
except dubai managed to become a extremely successful city, and your mad what they did to get success and say they should have done something different, let me guess, because its not "arab enough"?
Yeah I thought China's skylines were dark at night when I was there, then I see the windows of Dubai's high-rises don't show much activity either compared to Europe, the Americas, and anywhere else in Asia I've been.
Surely a place in the desert should be able to generate more than enough solar and wind energy to sustain itself.... plus it's wealthy enough to kick-start and possibly subsidise that industry. The city itself just needs to evolve and green itself... maybe put up some of those canvas shade thingies. I would assume that right now the biggest hurdles would be political.
The sad thing is that in an attempt to house new millionaire investors and residents, property prices are going through the roof and rents are simply unaffordable. As a result the middle income group is forced to retreat to other emirates and commute morning and evening on congested jammed roads to Dubai for work and other reasons. There’s no public transportation between the emirates so people buy more cars and petrol and remain stuck in traffic for hours on end.
Using natural air conditioning doesn't account for the at time terrible air quality. The aircon systems also function as air purifiers which means that you can escape the poor air quality too.
Hey if your looking for authentic Arabian Architecture, there no place like YEMEN, explore or watch videos on Sanaas old Town, Shibam, and the highland villages that all of these are authentic and has characyeristics that you mentioned of an ideall city, and as a fan of traditional Architecture and a Yemenite Arab all apreaciate if you make a video about Yemeni Architecture or refer them in a video, thanks for the video.
That tunnel concept should be scraped of this video. It's impractical and doesn't take weather changes in the equation. Look up Dubai storm and you'll get what I mean, it's a city without any drainage in case of rain.
I grew up in dubai - you mean to tell me that other Cities don't have you driving for half an hour to get anywhere? That most places have culture and isn't just a vapid landscape? I HATE IT HEREE
I hope with all the money Dubai makes they eventually start leaning into the Arab, Persian, and Islamic Architecture! That type of architecture and the desert setting always impressed me. It can be 10 times as gorgeous and also keep some of its modern buildings for the wealthy greedy people. it should be a mix so it stands out and doesn’t copy every other modern building in the world. Dubai could be so much more 😢
Would you like to come to Panajachel in Guatemala and tell us how to take advantage of what has been called the most beautiful lake in the world? It's a challenge, believe me!
I like these kind of videos of imagining what cities could be. Do you have ideas for new Ukraine if everything works out eventually? Anna from Ukraine showed doors as important aspect of their older buildings. It was vlog 215. I saw new buildings being build in Bucha. Looks kind of American style. I guess they don't have time to choose. Anything would do for those people left without home. However new cities would be required to be build from scratch.
What dubai government does which others do not, is change and adapt with the times... living here it is crazy how they have realized their past mistakes and work to better it with fresh ideas.
Dubai is my idea of a hi-tech 'hell'. Utterly soulless, driven by greed and status on an unimaginable scale -one that would make even most Americans gasp in horror.
I visited Dubai in 2015 and traveled into the back countryside. The UAE has extremely deep infrastructure much more solid than strip development in the United States for example. The UAE is built to last.
Great topic This video has a very contradicting part. Sprawling cities make it hard to reach places, but right after that, you say why build skyscrapers with so much land available. The biggest problem with these city planning videos is that they blanketly villanize car dependent cities as if everyone loves public transit. Public transit never addresses comfort, cleanliness, or punctuality. and i've lived in Toronto and London cities that have extensive networks. Dense cities have a hygine problem and generally have crime issues as well. But those facts never seem to be addressed when bringing up these solutions Can any city planning content creators create a video from a prospective of someone who enjoys driving? Or wants to live in a space bigger than a tiny condo? Because this point of view is very narrow and doesnt serve a significant portion of the population in those same cities.
If you love driving go live in Texas, and see how "just one more lane" doesn't actually bring back the open road drivers believe the experience should be like. There's a reason car-centrism is consistently demonized in city planning documentaries.
Organic islamic traditional cities exist such as fes old medina "a historic islamic metropolis still standing" or nizwa with they're arab fortress in sort of oasis mountains. yet they dont come near tourism of dubai.
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you are so uneducated you showed ford as the inventor of the car... big L 5:09
@@MarcoPolo-YogurtSlinger my comment has been deleted. not nice. look into who owns opera before installing it
It's so stupid that they have ignored all the historic knowledge of how to live in the desert. And they don't even have solar power on those bridges, right? Even though that would be self-regulated energy system: The more sun, the more cooling need but also the more solar electricity.
Well deserts are historically very sparsely populated. It’s different building a huge city in the desert that’s now home to almost 6 million people
That's the blindness induced by the bling of new technology. The kids (current generations), always think they know better than their "outdated" parents (ancestors).
@@thomasgrabkowski8283 Of course. But basic principles - creating shadows and shaded alleys, white paint etc. are still true.
Putting up full-glass fassades is so stupid on so many levels... (who wants to sit there inside the building, getting burned by the sun?? Computer screens hard so see and so on.)
They absolutely use solar energy. Just type in “MBR Solar” on Google maps and you’ll see one of the largest solar parks in the world just outside the city.
@@LeoPlaw tbf most of them do. The boomer generation are some of the most ill informed, ignorant cretins out there. They have no fcuking idea about anything, but they seem to think they do.
And last I checked the people who created Dubai aren't gen Zers.
Another thing to mention too: UAE has a problem beyond the extreme heat: extreme humidity. This is why traditionally, the locals lived in places like Al Ain, rather than Abu Dhabi or Dubai, which were fishing/ pearling spots. Places like Al Ain had drinking water and were far dryer, making them more hospitable
As a Local this is false. Historically locals left Alain 9 months of the year and moved towards abu dhabi dubai and other coastal cities due to the heat
@@ahmedalqamzi8555hahaha
It is absurd to contemplate how much enduring beauty could have been realized with those vast sums of money squandered on a fake, inhumane city…
Yeah, same with "similar" places like Las Vegas or megacities in China, sadly... What were they thinking? :/
Short term thinking in action… I hope they turn around, now they still can
@@bart_u Housing a ton of people which is proven that skyscrapers can't actually house millions of people other than the upper middle class and rich.
What do you expect the city to be? Its in the middle of the desert with an average temperature of 40 degrees Celsius. Of course it’s going to be all artificial. Dubai is the example of a city that is better and safer than all of the cities in America combined.
@@bart_uit wasn’t
Dubai seems like what would happen if Phoenix had oil money.
Those ai generated images depicting what Dubai could have been were incredible. Imagine if the UAE had built a city specific to their own culture and people instead of trying to appeal to the world. The people and culture are the soul of a city which I wish the government had cared more about. Arabian architecture is so beautiful. I loved the Ai image of the underground metro too, It was a very nice modern/futuristic touch. I hope those ideas will be implemented to that degree of beauty somewhere in the future.
Exactly. There’s so much potential, they could have built a splendid city but now they try to imitate whatever architect’s fever dream is fashionable at the moment. The city looks like they just ordered large corporations and architecture firms to build them a city according to current principles without much further thought if it was the best or most future proof way to build
i think some small areas look hella fine. around burj kahlifa for example, where they got the pretty lake, parks, mid rise urban fabric with arabic feel to it and some modern art deco skyscrapers in the background. But if you see the city as a whole it´s all a big mess
I really enjoyed the AI generated image examples too!
Their idea is working more well than the one you have, in terms of generating revenue from tourism, it's just that they overdid some things and the consequences are exaggerated because of the city's size and fame.
That’s not entirely fair though. The reason Dubai gained fame in the first place was because it appealed to the very tourists they sought to attract. There was a demand for what Dubai is now today and they Emiratis met that demand.
The fact of the matter is the UAE faced an existential crisis. With oil only expected to last another couple hundred years (and less than a hundred in the gulf) and other countries rapidly developing and undercutting their own industry as new deposits are discovered the only thing they could have done was rapidly build a city to quickly change their business model. Now that it has worked I perfectly agree that change is needed if the city wants to survive but the problem required a near immediate solution so you can’t fault them for the route they took (you can fault the unethical working standards but that’s not what I’m trying to defend)
Props for actually going there and visiting it before spouting out opinions on the internet. That's not an easy thing to do, but I really appreciate it when it happens!
Dubai represents human greed and excess in its worst, most vulgar form. Ironic given how it's illegal to drink alcohol in public.
I'll admit I've never been there....but at the same time, have no desire to go there at all. Mind destroying place with no authenticity. They could have created a beautiful new city...but instead just built soaring ugly concrete towers, with eight lane highways going through the middle. Too much like that 'Bladerunner' city, but without the rain.
Even places like Las Vegas have an authentic nature and an intriguing history. Dubai has none of this. It sorely lacks Las Vegas's unpredictable nature, its energy and pizzazz, or its unique history.
Yeah people shit all around a place even without experiencing it at all.
dubai has to be among the top 5 most farmed video topics on this website
more people talk about it than actually live there
It’s a bunch of jealous westerns who despise the fact that an Arab MusIim state is prosperous.
Its quite weird how the city gets richer, it also gets less attractive/ beautiful...
I don't think it's true look at Alexandria Egypt despite having a more traditional city layout it's one of the ugliest cities and the quality of life there is about 100 times worse.
@@BariNapach thanks for your response. I meant that rich cities nowadays dont build nuch attractive and beautiful as much as they used to do, when nowadays with modern technologies we can do it easier.
@@BariNapach Because Alexandria is poor. Dubai is a really wealthy city and it has so many opportunities to have better design
@@napabilirim there's rich cities out there that don't look like soulless plastic Dubai. Your argument is dumb.
@@fookorf if you call a entire major city of millions of people as "soulless" then you are a bigot.
I hate Dubai. This town was so hastily built that it’s urban design is completely nonsensical. A city can’t function properly when there’s no design
For such a car-centric society, it amazes me how incoherent their road layout is. It's like their urban planners had no foresight for consistency in wayfinding, instead relying on "just one more flyover, bro".
@@doujinflip Here was the design process: Take a handful of spaghetti. Throw it down on the table. "Yup, there we go!"
Why would they build infrastructure for civilians to walk around when no one’s going to want to be outside for half the year due to ungodly heat.
You just stupid jealous
4:00 The London School of Economics revealed in a recent study that on average low taxes do not attract millionaires, how to attract them is making an attractive place to live. As you said clean streets etc. It is why the UK in the 1960s which was centre of art and culture in the world had a huge influx of millionaires even though the top rate of tax was 97%. Now the actual tax rate received was lower, however well over double and some estimate show it at triple what is reciebed today. That is why the Uk was a world leader in research and development, the streets were clean and money could be put back into the arts attracting more people.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, will definitely check that out 🙏🏼
I love that. All the more reason to tax the super rich even more. Put that money back into liveable cities. Make sure small businesses don't fail and people don't end up homeless so the streets will continue to be attractive. Make them invest in the space they too want to live in. Check out Gary Stevenson, he's an ex trader from the same LSE advocating for this, especially in the UK.
@@Xero026 Gary Stevenson is brilliant
@@Alex-cw3rzHe's a commonsense talker but I guess he has to appeal to as many people as possible
California, New York, London, Paris, and many, many more would beg to differ. Sounds like that study was a wash.
The gulf countries ignoring and not innovating on native architectural and city philosophies is a depressing reality about modern Middle Eastern times.
"native architectural" that only exists in your head and not with these peoples actual cultures.
@AL-lh2ht I see when you mean, but that's not exactly what I'm getting at. I'm hoping for something more bold and inspired as opposed to rich Gulf cities treating turning into another skyscraper fest as a standard for becoming a great city. It's a lot more infuriating when taking into account how actual historical heritage is neglected by them, as if such states only started becoming worthwhile after getting oil or natural gas.
It exists, it’s just not the entire country. They have traditional markets.
I'd rather go to Muscat in Oman... Dubai looks pretty boring and bland to me
Been in Muscat too, years ago, indeed stunning
Muscat is basically what the aesthetic city recommends Dubai to become
Oman is stunning. If you're ever out that way, definitely a place to visit.
Two different cities that complement each other, your weird
@@michaelpapadopoulos6054sooo it’s a orientalist take with zero understanding of the city?
Thank you for making this video! It's one of the more level headed ones I've seen on this platform. As a resident and a student, the car centric-ness of this city is the bane of my student life. I use the metro and bus system for my commute and the capacity is not matching with the growing population. Even worse when you live near Sharjah where the end of day traffic lasts well into the night.
The Blue Line of the metro is hopefully on the way which connects the green line to Mirdif and neighboring areas but I still feel like they need to address the conjestion from Business Bay to Union Station. Changing portions of the highway underground and turning them into walkable parks is definitely a good idea! I would love it if the city did that along with more dedicated bus lanes that they started to implement. Life is comfy here (as far as my introverted, hangout averse self goes) but the city planning here has lots to be desired.
It's disgusting how Dubai had the opportunity and resources to design one of the world's most beautiful, pedestrian-friendly and well served by excellent mass transit cities on the planet and instead they recreated Houston.
Indeed, even Doha is more walkable now that they built out their metro network. The Dubai Metro is seriously undersized and its style-first feel makes it seem like it was originally a pet project rather than a serious alternative to the car.
"pedestrian-friendly" buddy has no idea you get heat stroke if you try to walk outside for more then ten minutes. Then again why should we be surprised a bigot knows nothing about why other people do things differently.
Why would they build a “walk-able” city when the temperature reaches 120 degrees for half the year?
I feel it's important to mention that they are starting to realize all this, They're already building a metro expansion with a lot more coming after that one as well as connecting areas that are disconnected by highways. The issue is more societal than government at this point as doing anything outside of a car is just not even in the thought process. Changes are happening though, road redesigns usually include alternative forms of transport and bike lanes. Change is happening and that's always good
I've been here for a decade now and that's to the point. Dubai is often judged for what it is, but a fairer evaluation in its context is a judgment on what it achieved in that short time, and its ambitions which are effectively very much in line with what is being presented as what they should do in the foreseeable future.
in reality in one walks outside during the day, that is why people use cars so much.
Create a series called "Saving Cities"! And make a video of how to save São Paulo, Brazil! Please. 😬
That would be a fun idea! Never been to Brazil 🇧🇷
@@the_aesthetic_cityoh please save Manila too ❤😂 (I feel so much pity for my city I beg a UA-camr to do such things)
@@the_aesthetic_cityyou should do a video on how you would redesign cities. Maybe do a theoretical Haussmann/Burnham plan for LA. With AI art, it could look great!
I am not a Muslim or an Arab but I study history and many of the buildings in the past in the Middle East are very amazing, And now I am building my dream house in Asia with the concept of Middle Eastern buildings in the past.😊
4:00 this isn't actually true, millionaires are threatening to leave, but when all your wealth is tied up in assets, all they can do is make baseless threats as they always do. Unless they want to fire sale all their assets. Which even Russians banned from London have struggled to do.
UAE has the highest amount of millionaires moving to it in the world do a google search. I think you’re talking about billionaires not millionaires. Millionaires can sell up everything and move out in a couple of months
You see the statistics though. They arent threatening they literally just left
It is sad to see what Dubai became from when I was first there, well, not including 1996 as it was just a connecting flight, but in 1999. 2004 was good too. But with the wave of social media it's gone to hell.
I recently watched a video ahout Dubai by Arab basically talking about how amazing it is but not focusing on any of the negatives, and I thought that was very misleading. I love how this video is more objective with some valid opinions thrown in, like "a developed city is not one where the poor drive, but where the rich take public transportation". Love this channel, keep it up
They built everything from scratch, imagine if they had experimented with new ways of integrating both cars and walkable paths. Maybe they would have discovered better way to lay out the infrastructure for both.
This has been done in Milton Keynes and Stevenage. Car centric urbanism with plenty of walking and cycle paths. Historically that meant that people drove everywhere as it was so convenient. Now more people are cycling.
Jay Foreman, in one of his videos, puts forward that convenient active travel needs to be paired with making driving inconvenient.
Actually Gustavo Petro never said that, it was Enrique Peñalosa who did, a former mayor of Bogotá
Ah.. it’s all over the internet for some reason. Will check it out
The renderings for the future "Arabic" Dubai look like something from a Star Wars prequal movie. But I love the passive cooling system using the Qanat. Humans have been very clever long before the industrial revolution and the high energy civilization created by fossil fuels. Thanks for highlighting that.
Please do this with more cities, I would love to see the good and the bad from around the world from your perspective.
As someone who lived there for my entire life, it’s quite noticeable and sadly been ignored for soo many years until recently when it almost feels like it’s too late.
I study architecture here and it’s been an important topic and our jobs is to create something that could save the city, and notice that i only said the city because funny enough the other cities have a more compact and more sustainable infrastructure unlike dubai, abudhabi in example has a more centreic design in the city where urban planning was way more focused on making sure people have all options to either walk or drive or use public transportation, same with sharjah and ajman which are also both same concept as abudhabi, while dubai just wanted to become the realstate and rich people paradise where everything is made to optimize profit and luxury then actually being an organic city with life, the solution exists, its just that dubai is was rush planned and didn’t care much about other things like sewage system or public transportation since their only goal was to look as shiny as possible, it been lately addressed and there are plans to build more metros and more urban centers fouced on making sure everyone is satisfied and sustainable for the future, but i think it’s probably too late for dubai unless they go full on demolising all existing urban sprawls and roads, which are highly unlikely…
speaking of actual thousand year old cities, take a look at Mecca. the holiest and one of the oldest cities in the world. its architecture doesn’t reflect that, plus its a bit strange how luxury hotels simply tower over the Kaaba. the vibe doesn’t match the lore.
Saudi Arabia destroyed almost everything of historical value
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_heritage_sites_in_Saudi_Arabia
Ask there countries leader's whom are trying to appese Western media and leader's by selling their culture 😅.
Look at Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan modern and old blend which reflects their culture and silk road history
@@affan3095the point is to house million of pilgrims around le site of pilgrimage, a lot of whom are not rich, They could have built 100,000s low rise buildings around the city and expend its infrastructure exponentially or build high density high rise hotels. The latter is cheaper to build and commercialise. There’s what’s ideal and what’s realistic and financially viable / easier to implement on the short term. I would personally have preferred if the masjid al haram site was kept ´islolated’, with tourist only reaching the site by a well integrated smart public transportation.
Take a look at abudhabi city center, it was built way back in the 80s way before dubai even started doing the whole tourist stuff, the city is way well planned and there was an actual thoughts behind it, even people in dubai prefer abudhabi, sewage system and public transportation and walkablity and underground highways so it doesn’t create huge separation in between neighborhoods, and also future plans for metros and trams that actually surve people to go from place to another, I don’t think dubai will do good in future but this city definitely will.
It’s such a shame they chose to build a cheap imitation of a car centric American city rather than a beautiful Arabian city
ah the "beautiful Arabian city" that only exists in your head and not actually part of their culture.
@@AL-lh2ht like Al Balad, Manama, Rijal Almaa, Esfahan or Shibam? Or ones that have been largely destroyed, like Diriyah, Petra, Babylon or Damascus?
Are you one of those shitty modernist architects who want to destroy heritage and make every city in the world look exactly the same with glass and steel boxes? Can’t you guys fuck off and ruin somewhere else?
@@AL-lh2htbeautiful Arabian cities exist, what are you talking about?
Thats pretty rude
This was a fascinating subject, easy sub! Really cool that you went there and shot all this footage. Do wonder about your proposed solution though, what conditions are needed that someone will develop that 6-7 story urbanism with walkable areas... as like a new district? It's not flashy, but it does seem like that style is getting a lot of interest organically online. Guess we will have to see where Dubai is in 5 years, and will any of Saudi Arabia's projects like Jeddah Tower or Neom pull interest from it. Kinda all over the place with this comment lol but it's a very interesting subject
I appreciate the very clear and thoughtful encapsulation of the problems of Dubai, the manifestation of all that is wrong with modern city planning. I would add that they don't just need money and will, but also spirit and intelligence.
i have to say, thanks to you i went to the le plessis robinson, and by far is the best place i went in my life, i never have seen something similar
There is a model that made Dubai what it is today, and it's called private capital. So Dubai had no chance to become a compact city, because all the regions were developed and owned by different entities. The Dubai created by the government is just the Deira region, which is quite compact. However, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah, DIFC, Barsha Heights, and other areas were all privately developed regions. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, Dubai is not a unified project; it developed according to the business plans and spreadsheets of investors.
Great video.
Could you do an analysis on ski towns aswell?
The anxient cooling system is so clever! And the old, genuine clay houses look so charming.
And the options you presented were just what I would love to see.
All those sky scrapers are so unfriendly and imposing.
(- And what if there's a fire?!)
I would *never ever* want to go to glitzy Dubay, the way it is now.
Built for rhe rich at the expense of poor migrant workers with no insurance or unions.
It's completely offputting.
Give me instead the Old Suqs of Damascus and Aleppo, or the amazing traditional architecture of Yemen and Oman.
Really anywhere with a genuine, regional style in local building materials.
Gustavo Petro didn’t say that phrase it was Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor that design transmilenio in Colombia and provoked the explosion or BRT world wide
Yes I saw someone here saying that - apologies as the quote is spread widely on the internet with credit to Petro. I can fix it in the subtitles probably
9:55 You gotta tell me what promts you used for that
Happy to help! Midjourney 6.1:
“aerial photo of a vast high density traditional Arabian city, 7 stories tall, lush streets, fountains, human scaled, haussmann urbanism meets Arabian Emirati traditional architecture, palm trees, green, domes and wind catchers, extreme population density, arabian liveable urbanism”
11:17 Petro is a bad example. I am from Colombia, he has prohibited colombian pezrol companies to extraxt oil and gas, as a result, ecopetrol now buys 30% of the gas to Venezuela (a dictatorship). Petro put colombians like me in a difficult position only to help a dictatorship
I even heard the quote isn’t even his… a lesson for me to double check all quotes haha
9:14 Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait & Singapore are city states. I think energy consumption per capita of the Cities of USA & Canada would be higher than the Arab Gulf City States.
Dubai is not a state. It's a city in a country called the United Arab Emirates
@@TheMagnifying 70% of UAE's population live in the 3 biggest cities.
@@TraderRemus yeah so the population is distributed. Hence it's not a city state
literally look next door in Oman. they're the opposite to Dubai and did so many things right!
yes he should really visit there
I’ve been, way back in 2018. Indeed very beautiful. Peaceful & human scaled. Maybe I should do a video about it but would need to film more first 😬
@@the_aesthetic_city you are a very hard-working person may God take you far. i enjoy ur content a lot
Kind of, most people live in single family homes but there still is beauty.
@@the_aesthetic_city Yes! Please make a video about Oman
Yo! Great video! You should check out Oman's new city which is the opposite of Dubai. Sultan Haithman City.
Presenter: "it could use traditional Arabian architecture..."
The leaders:"let's build Neom & The Line"
You're thinking of Saudi Arabia, not the UAE.
Those images at 10:00 and further are AI generated? I'd love to see more videos what great cities could look like. Detailed. What Dubai could look like, perfect Paris, perfect LA, perfect Mexico city and so on. :-)
It indeed is. Although I often get criticism on using AI, I think it is useful for such use cases - just to give an idea of what it could be like! Looking cool right?
@@the_aesthetic_city There are only two major sections of people who opine about AI: people who have used it and who are convinced it's awesome tech, and people who haven't yet used it and who criticize its use.
People who have used it but are still saying we shouldn't use AI are a tiny minority. I say that because AI is so useful for things like generating imagery and summarizing topics via LLMs (I am less optimistic about other uses, like generating novel research or genuine displays of intelligence), I almost don't understand how you can't be blown away by it.
@@ekszentrik It is actually dangerous because it will generate approximate pseudo architecture which will prevent people from learning about true style and building. You may think it's funny and obvious that everybody knows people do not have 6 fingers, but on complex topics AI impressions are dangerous methods that can give wildly deviating ideas to untrained observers. Further is not only what is wrong, but also what is trained on what is wrong the AI public data generation cascade.
@@the_aesthetic_city I don't mind using AI and it indeed looks great.
@@TheSquidPro True. I guess I made my post actually under a different mental headspace: I personally use StableDiffusion to generate imagery that doesn't exist in the real world (in my example, characters with unconventional fashion), while in the video I was thinking "Ah, he uses it to generate images how a future Arab city with trad architecture could look like", which is likewise a "non-really existing thing". However, on reflection, the vid uploader was actually pretty lazy for not researching real world examples of modern Arab architecture to use as example (which is scarcely possible with my personal AI use).
I agree, the pollution with AI content regarding things that actually exist is a massive issue. The only solution is training people that everything they see post-2023 is potentially AI.
I’ve come across many discussions about Dubai’s urban planning, but this is by far the most genuine study, critique, and advice I’ve seen. Most other content tends to fall into one of two extremes: either ‘Dubai is the greatest city on the planet’ or ‘The Middle East is bad, I’ve never been there and never will. Here’s me talking over a Google Street View image.’ While Dubai is certainly impressive, I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest in terms of urban planning. However, it’s definitely ahead of its neighboring countries, managing a large car-dependent population while keeping things running smoothly, it really is an achievement in itself.
Thank you! 🙏🏼 Yeah I tried to be fair but to also get my criticism and ideas across. And I’m also a bit disappointed by the “black & white” view in most videos about Dubai.
Indeed, it is impressive to handle such a city but the problems they are handling skillfully now are problems they could have avoided - so although it is still impressive, it would have been even more impressive if they could have solved those problems ahead of time.
In any case, I think expanding the metro would be the lowest hanging fruit for now, hope they will!
@@the_aesthetic_cityThey are already planning a new Blue Line for the Dubai and construction is starting soon.
@@darksavage596From what I've seen, the Blue Line still won't include double-length trainsets that the Dubai Metro network desperately needs, nor will it reach demand centers like Global Village and Motor City.
@@doujinflip you start with one project and then expand further.
Great video. Educational!
I enjoyed seeing the nice walkable example pics!
Good video. I like that you were constructive instead of just being negative and cynical.
That was the objective :) Channels like Adam Something do that enough already.. we need solutions instead of just criticism
Dubai looks like a fantastic sci-fi movie set... until people try to live in it. Few walkable streets, extreme heat, and endless traffic - it's a city built for cars, not people. When will they realize urban sprawl isn't the future? 🚗🌆 They seem to slowly get that they need to change something.
My sister lived there for a while. Apparently they don't even have places to sit in the malls.
So that is why millions of people live there?
Awesome video! The AI pictures of what Dubai could be are so beautiful! If turned reality, it could compete with any European city in aesthetics. Adam Something made an interesting video about Dubai 20 minutes city. Which they’re claiming they’ll make Dubai more walkable and be more bike friendly than Amsterdam by 2040. Would it be awesome if you make a video about Rio de Janeiro. It’s very dense, walkable and lively city in its south zone, where hundreds of thousands live in. It also has a great and affordable rental bike infrastructure and much safer thank people may think. Thank you!
Dubai already died financially. Since the measures against money laundering they lost the real accelerator investments. They invest more abroad and try to repeat the "Dubai model" in several places around the world like Ras al-Hikma in Egypt.
It was the third most visited city last year on earth.. why lie?
Dubai is the meaning of Aesthetics over logic!
There’s the typical jealous westerner who refuses to give any credit to the GCC countries. Enjoy your rampant crime and open drug markets in the US. At least Emiratis don’t have to worry about stepping in a homeless drug addicts feces while they’re on the way to get their morning coffee.
Underground tunnels with electric robotaxis is much better than public transport: it's private, point to point, and adapts to your schedule
They abuse Filipino people like myself in that city!.!.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t want to visit that city!.!.
The concept of Human Rights doesn’t exist in that city!.!.
Nice cover on Dubai. Have you been to Muscat? It still has the boundary highways of course but they keep the architecture adhering to the local climate and culture. Somehow it's not losing its sense of place. ❤
At 9:55 i would Definitely visit that place 😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮
Oman is pretty similar
I’ve never been, so I must reserve judgement, but I spent some time in Bahrain and had the same complaints. Once it ceases to be fashionable, I fear Dubai’s metaphorical collapse will come quickly.
'Tis hard to figure why anyone would want to visit artificial and plastic Dubai when he could journey to the authentic, sustainable and exquisitely-managed cities of Kinshasa, Port-au-Prince, Lagos, Islamabad, N'Djamena, Dhaka, Khartoum and Sana'a. In the country of the latter, the Houthi Home Stays in the North are supposed to be heavenly. Not to be missed is Beirut, which has undergone a thorough process of decolonization over the last few years, and where one can currently enjoy the excitement of free fireworks' shows on a nightly basis.
by "Beirut undergone a thorough process of decolonization' you mean they are a failed state in a four way civil war....
It'll never happen. People would rather the whole thing dries up and blows away than be perceived as going backwards - no matter how forwards those solutions actually are. Dubai will barely exist in a century.
Masdar City was an attempt to address these shortcomings but it did not gain traction.
Maybe you could examine and analyse why? Thanks !
I remember having seen very interesting videos about Masdar. A city that was humane, nice to live in, and would use natural energy to be self sufficient. truly the dream
@@clemradio
It still used high tech but it was a nice attempt. Solar power, underground electric public transport, no cars, passive cooling, locally sourced building materials, narrow streets, low rises, water recycling...
Maybe it lacked humane beautiful architecture.. not sure but definitely a good idea, thanks for suggesting!
Seeing modern Dubai feels like the future, uplifting, and my heart beats faster. But would I want to live there? Uhm, no. Seeing the architecture built on the region's traditional architecture feels so enchanting and much more conducive to living there. Still, I wonder how the actual people living there would see it. Would it be perceived as clichéd Oriental, a Westerner's romanticized view of the Orient? I wonder.
I think many people just don't really care, as long as they are comfortable. They will probably like the spectacle and the views from the towers.
But the moment something doesn't work anymore, it's done - and those people will leave.
@@the_aesthetic_city Well, there have been accusations that Westerners want to keep people from these countries in the past. Modern Dubai is a statement against that, and that is probably part of its attraction. But you are right, of course. If it's not comfortable and sustainable for people anymore, the city is done. What I liked most about the traditional style cities you showed was that they are actually car-free. A city to walk in - I truly love that. I also loved the quote about development being rich people using public transport.
I was done with Dubai having twice visited even before my office assigned me to there. I mainly went because of all the places I can go _from_ Dubai, although ironically I ended up flying competitors of Emirates because of how overpriced and tacky the EK experience has become.
this "region's traditional architecture" only exist in your head.
@@lysan1445 You have no idea you get heat stroke if you walk outside for ten minutes. There is a reason no one walks around during the day.
babe wake up new aesthetic city upload
First of all, great topic and good work. 👍
That being said, I have a few comments.
1) Could you please set a slower pace for the image swapping and also the spinning. I was struggling with nausea when trying to focus the view.
2) The tips on ‘ saving Dubai’ are very good, apart from the one with the metro. I never understood why the metro lines have to be weird shapes instead of a grid of lines which would work much better being more flexible.
3) I think it's too late to save Dubai. This video should have been watched before they built all this....
What is the place on your channel banner?
Until they make it walkable, I won't come to Dubai habibi.
Very well balanced. It’s so nice to see someone highlight the cleanliness and fantastic service. It’s become trendy to hate on these cities, for all the reasons that have now become obvious. One more thing to note is that these places are an oasis in an extremely unstable Middle East. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo are all examples of old, traditional and ‘sustainable’ cities, which have been and will be around far longer than Dubai. But the past and far future do not matter when you want a good job, a place to raise your family and somewhere you can live in safety now and in the next 20 years. The Gulf states ARE an anomaly, but for the Arab world, they are a welcome one. Could they be better? Yes! But trust me, I have lived in these countries, and they could be far, far worse.
Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo all have a much different climate and geography, This is like saying Britain and southern Italy have the same climate.
"malls and other things"? MALLS are crazy??
It was not Gustavo Petro who said it, but Enrique Peñalosa. Both were mayors of Bogotá and very much each other´s nemesis, and so it is ironic that the quote is often attributed to Petro.
It just shows that money and intelligence dont always go hand in hand. They may have billions maybe even trillions of dollars but they dont even know how to design a functional city.
Like the cities in USA?
@@DzSagace Obviously. Bad city designg originated in USA. Dubai was literally inspired by American cities and suburbs.
To be fair, it's easier to say all this in hindsight when we can more clearly see the problems that it brings. Back when bad cities were being designed, it wouldn't have been as easy to see that.. you might've even liked the futuristic looks and being able to drive everywhere if you didn't have these UA-cam videos to learn about this. Urban planning is an ongoing study, and mostly relies on analysing existing planning because it has so many variables. Now that many cities have gone this route, we can analyse them over time and see how it "performs" and learn from them. The push to build more walkable and human scale cities is driving a change in how cities develop further. Just like any science, humanity experiments, analyses results and tries to learn and push the field. It's just that a field like urban planning is a lot slower to progress. My point is to try to think a bit more nuanced.. as they say things aren't just black and white
@@MrBsehratmaannking This whole thing was such a waste tho. Cities worked perfectly fine back then. Sure they werent perfect and had some flaws but overall they were pretty good since city design had thousands of years of experimentation and improvements. But then the modernists came and decided to completely reinvent the wheel for absolutely no reason. Why reinvent something that already works. What we shouldve done was to just improve upon the already existing city design principles. We keep thinking we are better and smarter than the people from the past which leads to us making these type of mystakes. The saying "Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It” fits perfectly to this topic.
You said when millions of people live their and its a prosperous city.
No way that Maarten van Rossem supports you on Patreon, that's awesome!
Now, regarding Dubai - I have no idea what it's like as I've never been there, but it does look overblown and overrated, in the same way that the average modernist and internationalist city in Qatar, Bahrain and now Saudi Arabia is trying to be. This stuff only works insofar they have money, but given the change of the environment, that'll eventually become unsustainable. It's like a worse version of Las Vegas. The Arabian world has more interesting places to be and it's an actual shame they didn't apply these practices instead of wasting time, space, money and resources on _this._
except dubai managed to become a extremely successful city, and your mad what they did to get success and say they should have done something different, let me guess, because its not "arab enough"?
Ahhh, Dubai. Mostly empty skyscrapers...
Yeah I thought China's skylines were dark at night when I was there, then I see the windows of Dubai's high-rises don't show much activity either compared to Europe, the Americas, and anywhere else in Asia I've been.
I think you'd need to tear it down completely and start over from scratch! 😂
Most Emirati leaders were educated in the United States, so it's no wonder their cities look like this.
Probably went to University of Texas schools too, seeing as they're similarly bent on cars occupying their plentiful flat land.
Surely a place in the desert should be able to generate more than enough solar and wind energy to sustain itself.... plus it's wealthy enough to kick-start and possibly subsidise that industry. The city itself just needs to evolve and green itself... maybe put up some of those canvas shade thingies. I would assume that right now the biggest hurdles would be political.
They literally have one of the largest solar farms on earth.
The sad thing is that in an attempt to house new millionaire investors and residents, property prices are going through the roof and rents are simply unaffordable. As a result the middle income group is forced to retreat to other emirates and commute morning and evening on congested jammed roads to Dubai for work and other reasons. There’s no public transportation between the emirates so people buy more cars and petrol and remain stuck in traffic for hours on end.
Using natural air conditioning doesn't account for the at time terrible air quality. The aircon systems also function as air purifiers which means that you can escape the poor air quality too.
Great video! People should listen to you!
I have family members who enjoy the hype and even went there on vacation. It sickens me to this day. Ah well...
Hey if your looking for authentic Arabian Architecture, there no place like YEMEN, explore or watch videos on Sanaas old Town, Shibam, and the highland villages that all of these are authentic and has characyeristics that you mentioned of an ideall city, and as a fan of traditional Architecture and a Yemenite Arab all apreaciate if you make a video about Yemeni Architecture or refer them in a video, thanks for the video.
ah yes advertizing people to go to a war zone is very smart
Good quote or example from Gustavo Petro.
This is what I started thinking within 2 hours of landing and seeing the places
Cant lie, Dubai looks impressive the first time you see it. But I dont see myself living there as its too much glitter and glamour and heat for me.
That tunnel concept should be scraped of this video. It's impractical and doesn't take weather changes in the equation. Look up Dubai storm and you'll get what I mean, it's a city without any drainage in case of rain.
I grew up in dubai - you mean to tell me that other Cities don't have you driving for half an hour to get anywhere? That most places have culture and isn't just a vapid landscape? I HATE IT HEREE
I hope with all the money Dubai makes they eventually start leaning into the Arab, Persian, and Islamic Architecture! That type of architecture and the desert setting always impressed me. It can be 10 times as gorgeous and also keep some of its modern buildings for the wealthy greedy people. it should be a mix so it stands out and doesn’t copy every other modern building in the world. Dubai could be so much more 😢
There's like a whole game about what would happen if Dubai gets hit by a mega natural disaster
12:30 What is that city?
Florence Italy.
Would you like to come to Panajachel in Guatemala and tell us how to take advantage of what has been called the most beautiful lake in the world? It's a challenge, believe me!
I like these kind of videos of imagining what cities could be. Do you have ideas for new Ukraine if everything works out eventually? Anna from Ukraine showed doors as important aspect of their older buildings. It was vlog 215. I saw new buildings being build in Bucha. Looks kind of American style. I guess they don't have time to choose. Anything would do for those people left without home. However new cities would be required to be build from scratch.
What dubai government does which others do not, is change and adapt with the times... living here it is crazy how they have realized their past mistakes and work to better it with fresh ideas.
Dubai is my idea of a hi-tech 'hell'. Utterly soulless, driven by greed and status on an unimaginable scale -one that would make even most Americans gasp in horror.
Please do a video on Nairobi Kenya
I visited Dubai in 2015 and traveled into the back countryside. The UAE has extremely deep infrastructure much more solid than strip development in the United States for example. The UAE is built to last.
The UAE, sure, but Dubai? Less so.
@@Game_Hero Dubai is in the UAE.
@@josephpiskac2781 The city of Dubai will not survive, the rest of the UAE surely.
Lack of rain and cheap imported labor keeps down maintenance costs, freeing up funds for more solid and aesthetic designs.
@@Game_Hero You said when dubai success has only grown...
Great topic This video has a very contradicting part. Sprawling cities make it hard to reach places, but right after that, you say why build skyscrapers with so much land available.
The biggest problem with these city planning videos is that they blanketly villanize car dependent cities as if everyone loves public transit. Public transit never addresses comfort, cleanliness, or punctuality. and i've lived in Toronto and London cities that have extensive networks. Dense cities have a hygine problem and generally have crime issues as well. But those facts never seem to be addressed when bringing up these solutions
Can any city planning content creators create a video from a prospective of someone who enjoys driving? Or wants to live in a space bigger than a tiny condo? Because this point of view is very narrow and doesnt serve a significant portion of the population in those same cities.
If you love driving go live in Texas, and see how "just one more lane" doesn't actually bring back the open road drivers believe the experience should be like. There's a reason car-centrism is consistently demonized in city planning documentaries.
In reality the Idea they should build out into a sandy desert instead on the coast where its cooler, is pretty insane.
BTW, did the chap ever explained how he got to the issue of cities?
Is this his hobby or he has a related occupation?
It's been analysed and studied a lot, you can find this information online
isnt opera ad too long for such a short video?
What i find most unbelieveble and disturbing of all these modern city's is that they all want to look like New York , Thats silly.
Not happy that you accepted Opera's sponser😐 but well I guess you gotta feed your family
What's the problem with Opera?
A collection of far flung destinations only accessible by car rather than an actual city. Describes Los Angeles too.
awaken my significant other Urban design youtuber The Aesthetic City has produced another video
Organic islamic traditional cities exist such as fes old medina "a historic islamic metropolis still standing" or nizwa with they're arab fortress in sort of oasis mountains. yet they dont come near tourism of dubai.