Killer

If you live in Bur Dubai (old Dubai, where all the Gujjus and Sindhis live), your doorway is always flooded with these fliers- one per day on average. They're notoriously squeezed through the sides of the doors, making for very very creepy noises when one's alone at home.

Crunch

Childhood dream come true, isn't it?

Glimpses of awesumness

 I love rotting old buildings!

Copy-pastedness that actually looks very cool. I love the satellite dishes.

I used to be obsessed with the city.... Part 6

Cityscape:

Cityscape brought the people this beautiful giant model of the whole city! yay! I was glad to see the densities (I found no other analytical maps or studies of such). Thanks UPC! 

So as you can see, the high rises are confined to the sea fringe, Airport road and the CBD. Everything else is low rise residential. 

Corniche fringe is going left to top, Airport road  goes from left to right and the CBD is in that top middle chunk. The white dense area on the top right is Reem Island, yet in the making.

  You see a shadow of tall buildings along airport road going through the center. To the left is Reem Island, proposed to ease some load off the CBD. The CBD lies on the left of airport road, nearer to the sea, on the main island. 

All these pictures in this 6-part series were taken long, long ago- when it was nicer to be outside. I haven't been out and about in the city much these days. I'm now obsessed with cats. :) 

I used to be obsessed with the city... Part 5

The neighbourhoods:

The neighbourhood I stay in is a nice, silent one. Some rare people wander the streets like me. Few kids here and there. Some mosques (regulation is to have a mosque every 700m). LOTS of dead ends and cul de sacs. On days of  nice weather it's a real pleasure to cycle around these houses and discover interesting little things about them. On hot days... well... I wouldn't know because I'm at home in the AC with the cat, yes?

One cul de sac. Nice one. In this neighbourhood, the houses are BIG!

.. not really unique in design, no character that really stands out- but rather everything blends into the background.

A sikka- a little gulley that connects these cul de sacs. So if you're stuck and you're on foot or a cycle, one of these is always around to cut across. I like going through them and not knowing where it's going to lead.

On the main road (nice green one, too) is this blue crack in this house.

I love this one! The vertical gardening thing is great!

A little colony of copy-paste houses (that don't look so). Interesting place, but randoms just can't go in to explore.

I used to be obsessed with the city... Part 4

The greenery thing: 

Abu Dhabi is big on greenery! They need to show. I've done a post on this before, and after that here also. So this is just a rehash.

These are actually of just this nice locality called Bainunah. Very green, wide streets, good breeze catchment... all that.

I used to be obsessed with the city... Part 3

The awesome inner city/CBD:

So this is where all the action is. The people, the food, the drinking holes, the shops... but not the best places to live. Yet, I have found some of the most interesting buildings here. These seem to be the oldest in the city. It seems like everyone was out to innovate then. They had no idea what a high rise should look like, their minds were untainted. And so they experimented away. But then came the time when the word "high rise" would conjure up an image that is now permanently pasted in our minds. Sleek and slender, the new age high rise is all about the overall shape (like a disc or a tilt) and the finish. These, on the other hand, were about the detail. The smallest element that multiplied to make the whole. Not many would design a residential high rise this way anymore. 

Which is really sad. 

How cool is this one? Your general idea of a pretty balcony on a nice bungalow is now plastered all through this building. Who would think like this?

What can I say about this one? I lurve it!

I used to be obsessed with this city... Part 2

Through the city:

So through the city are these old and new high rise buildings- with obvious elements of Islamic architecture. It is refreshing to see (after an "international" Dubai) and some of them do innovate with materials and elements, but after a while it gets old. You want to see a new idea... somewhere.

These are the somewhat older ones...

Really? Come on....

These look newer and so are little less tacky- but with some arches at the bottom and top as well.

I used to be obsessed with the city... Part 1

The Corniche: 

The Corniche is flanked by high rises, residential and offices. It is quite opposite to the sea-face in Mumbai where regulation does not permit buildings flanking the sea to be higher than around 5-6 storeys. But the ones behind can rise above still. Marine drive even has a regulation for the type and size of trees. So I wonder what was the motivation behind these high rises flanking the sea. 

More pics of buildings on the corniche are here. 

These high rises are also really densely packed with hardly gaps of 5-10 meters between them. This is only an Abu Dhabi specialty, I hope.

 One thing I like here is that the buildings have their own Islamic character seen through certain elements. You really feel like you're in an Arab city! Abu Dhabi started making high rises way before the idea of a chic, sleek, glazed high rise norm was born. So they ended up creating their own style. 

Landscape Abu Dhabi continues

So this is a google map of the 30 meter wide median photographed in the previous post.
So after goog-mapping it... I see that it is, in fact, not 30 meters, but 50 METERS WIDE!!!! And only once have I seen people playing something in it...
On the bottom left corner you also see the median tapering down after the oval round-about, with the tapered part having a meandering path inside. Well, that's the path that has no entrance or exit... Why, o why is it there?
On one side (top) of the street you see fancy villas that have their OWN GARDENS; and the other side has the police station, some office building, some constructions and a lot of sand. So... now you see why this makes me angry.
But on the other hand, I have a little piece of information. Apparently the reason old Abu Dhabi is designed so funnily is because Sh. Zayed had some plans in mind. The only way I can get a hint of that is to get a hold of the old street regulations- which is not available on the internet. So I'll have to scoop it out from some engineer's office. Apparently it's in Arabic :| I NEED THIS DOCUMENT! It'll probably explain a LOT.

Landscaping

 This is a part of the Corniche... its a fancy word for sea-face... Very nicely landscaped. Every part is different! No confusion at all! Very nice place! I like :) Very accessible, lots of green, beach, skating and cycling space, performance space and display too... and of course- food!



This is a strip outside my office. Patchy green grass... I say off with the grass to save water and thicken the trees so we can walk in the summer too. Please listen to me, Urban Planning Council. I know everything.



Green, fat median. I'm the only person that actually uses it, I think- I WALK on it.... Everybody else uses it as an eye-comforter.

Bainuna Circle... leading up to the Emirates Palace Hotel- fancy-like.... You can smell the richness- just through the flowers...


This is a bloody traffic circle! there's no legal way to get here, no zebra crossing, nothing. Yet a wonderful pathway starting from nowhere....


Little nicer looking landscaping outside some office building. But the landscaping cuts off the footpath completely. So if you're walking, you have to climb up a slope, go through here, and climb down straight onto a road... but that's not the crappy part! The crappy part is that this landscaped terrace has trenches all over!!! Apparently for water to flow through.... but if you're wearing a tight skirt... don't bother ...


And after the trenched terrace, you cross a road, and the path slopes down into this intimate little pathway.... grass wall one side, cars above, and thick trees on another side. Very cosy....


This is the cherry on the cake- its a 30M WIDE MEDIAN!!!!!! With only 2 lane roads on either side!!! wtf!!! What an eye-wash!
So foreign-lady-that-shall-not-be-named says "...so I came here for the first time and was hoping it wasn't like Dubai, and then i saw how greeeeeen it was and knew I could live here... ooo... aa... ooo...." But foreign-lady-that-shall-not-be-named doesn't realize that THIS IS A DESERT!!! ITS UNNATURAL TO HAVE IT SO GREEN.....  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

So- just because they wanna woo the idiot foreigners, they spend all their time and money on senselessly manicured green spaces that CAN'T EVEN BE ACCESSED!!!! Why would I send my kids to a 30M wide MEDIAN to play, when they can bloody well play in the garden of my villa where I can watch them through my kitchen window???

Now here's an innocent area that could do with some 30M wide green medians.... I'm sure it'll be better used, at least.... stoopid money-wasters....

Abu Dhabi Randoms