Yes, but when?

Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid's CNN interview is getting plenty of exposure, especially the 'everything we started, we are going to finish' comment.

I don't doubt it, but the real question for residents suffering from construction fatigue is when.

An example is the Al Sufouh tram line. Nothing's happened for months.




The roads in front of JBR and all the way past Media City, after years of construction, were finished. Then they were dug up. Re-finished. Then dug up again for the tram line.

Then...nothing.

We're left to negotiate several kilometres of abandoned road works.

That's something that clearly hasn't been affected by the meltdown, digging up areas which have, at great expense and to the huge relief of users, been completed.



The same areas are dug up over and over again.

It seems to me that hole digging's one of the very few jobs-for-life these days.


CNN interview.
Projects will be finished.

Here they go again

I just don't understand the thought process.

If there is any thought.

It's something I've posted about many times, the constant digging up of work which has just been finished.

Here's an example, just one of many in Dubai Marina.

For the past couple of years they've been erecting the building. The usual thing, a messy construction site behind a tatty plywood fence.

The exterior work is finished, the fence comes down. They send in a team to tidy it all up and lay the footpath pavers.

A week after it's all finished they send in another team to dig a bloody great hole in the footpath.



Why leave it until the pavers are laid?

Why not dig the hole and do whatever they need to do while it's still a patch of sand?

More bad news for Brand Dubai

I've just been reading an AFP story in the Sydney Morning Herald, the headline being "Dubai's beaches face a stinking problem"

After the original plethora of positive stories with everything presented in glowing terms, we're seeing more and more of these negative reports. From the living and working conditions of labourers to the whale shark to the beach romp jail sentences to the beach pollution issue.

So much of Dubai's success in future depends on tourism that it must be causing concern in high places.

The story begins like this:


Dubai's beautiful beaches have been making headlines because of a couple who allegedly had sex by the sea, but a more pervasive nuisance from washed up sewage threatens to deter tourists.

For several weeks some of the emirate's fabled beaches have been covered with the stinking contents of septic tanks as Dubai suffers the consequences of its frantic and poorly controlled development.

The foul effluent, which threatens to damage Dubai's image, highlights one of the paradoxes of the emirates -- it can build the world's tallest tower and six-star hotels but has not constructed the sewage works it needs.

New apartment blocks and neighbourhoods are rising everywhere at a record pace, but infrastructure is dragging behind.

For example, the city still has no main drainage system, hence the need for tankers to collect the contents of septic tanks and transport the waste to the emirate's only sewage treatment works at Al-Awir, out in open desert.

It is of course all to do with the thing I complain about endlessly. Lack of or incompetent planning.

I was actually intending to start this post about here, with another, much less dramatic, example of incompetent planning. The Herald article was on the same subject so I started with that instead.

My little example is in Jumeirah Beach Residence, along the very pleasant area known as The Walk.

Completed, attractive areas are being dug up by the holescaping gangs.

As I've said many times before, this creates inconvenience, it adds unnecessary noise & dirt pollution, it obviously adds costs.

In The Walk many recently finished perfectly good kerb areas were being dug up, jack-hammers blasting away.

I couldn't understand why, but now I see. They forgot to include wheelchair access ramps. So now they're putting them in...



Other areas, also complete and looking good, have been jackhammered away and huge holes have been dug.

It looks to me as though they'll eventually be water features. Water features they didn't think about before they'd finished the construction.



It isn't just one forgetful or incompetent individual, there's a long line of people responsible for this.

The executives giving the original briefing, the designers, all the people in the chain who approved the designs up to senior executives who signed off on the plans, the people who approved various stages of the work. No-one said "What about the access ramps?" No-one said "We need a fountain at the bottom of the steps."

Only after all the work is finished are these things raised.

The problems we face were avoidable. All of them. It needed, still needs, planning.

But there isn't any.



The Sydney Morning Herald article is here.

JBR ain't all bad.

Jumeirah Beach Residence has taken a lot of stick for the high density accommodation and I have to agree - far too many towers, too tall and too many of them packed in together.

But actually, walking around it there's a whole side of it that's been done very well.

On the Plaza level, although you're surrounded by the towers, there is some open space, water features, landscaping, and I'm surprised to say that I think it's done well.

When you're on the ocean side there are more architectural features and of course there's much more of a feeling of open space...

There are shops and restaurants up on the Plaza Level too, and some of the restaurants look to be worth a try so we'll do that over the next few weeks...

Then down at ground level on the Gulf side there's The Walk. That's the retail section, about two kilometres long I guess, with a lot of coffee shops and restaurants going in, many already open. There are also banks and shops such as Jumbo Electronics and clothing retailers.

It's a much more human scale down here, the ocean to one side and much lower buildings on the other, masking most of the towers from view.

Again there's open space and landscaping. A good choice of street furniture too I think, the lamps, benches, even the waste bins...

The Walk takes on a different atmosphere at night, a very pleasant one too...

There's also some nice detail, particularly the use of design and materials relevant to the region...

But of course it wouldn't truly be Dubai unless the completed work was constantly dug up.

Inevitably the holescaping gangs are out in force in the completed areas, digging them up again.

The towers remind me of the low cost towers in Hong Kong and Singapore and I wouldn't want to live in such high density, crowded accommodation. But overall I'm pleasantly surprised, the rest of it is well done.

I think I'm in the best position - a short walk from the facilities without living there.

Put it down, dig it up...

...put it down again, dig it up again.

That's the Dubai way. And that's why the construction will never be finished. Along with it we get the added confusion, extra pollution, wasted money.

They're at it again in Dubai Marina. At long, long last the paving of footpaths and roundabouts is being done.

As always, resources are being thrown at the job. Dozens of workers everywhere, piles of pavers, machinery...they're doing a great job and doing it very quickly...





Less than 50 metres away the holescapers are working equally feverishly, ripping up pavers and digging big holes...





I see it all the time and I'm still amazed every time.

And so to Singapore...

In a couple of hours we're off to the airport for two weeks in Singapore. Not sure if I'll have time to post anything here...if not, see you in Ramadan.

More great moments in the art of planning

It's peak traffic time, it's the road from Madinat Jumeirah to Interchange 4 on SZR - the one people use to avoid the Salik tollgate.

It was worse than ever this morning, jammed, frustration, impatience, traffic pushing in trying to change lanes and increasing the probability of a crash...



The cause? Someone thought peak traffic time was a good time to send the gardeners out with their big truck to collect the grass clippings.



Oh, well done!

And, as always, no advance warning of the hazard with the red flag man just a few feet in front of it.

In another example of what's considered giving adequate warning, I love the way they tie one or two cones to the back of the trucks and drag them along behind.

And a PS to yesterday's rant about the endless digging up of just-finished projects, here's another one in Dubai Marina.

Two years of construction with all the ugliness, pollution, inconvenience, diversions and finally it all comes good. The building is completed, the construction fence is removed, the pavers go down and the footpath is done. It all looks clean and neat and finished.

A few weeks later...



Yep, they're digging it up!

Yet more bloody holescaping!

I keep on about it and I'm sure you're bored with the same old thing, but I have to let off steam.

It annoys the hell out of me.

We have more than enough construction work all around us from projects being built. Endless piles of sand, kilometres of red & white concrete barriers, plastic cones and flapping plastic.

On top of it is the endless digging up of completed work adding to the ugliness, the pollution, the inconvenience.

The same stretches dug up time after time after time.

DEWA is at it again around Phase 1 of Dubai Marina. It was finished, what, three years ago. But every few months when the landscaping re-establishes itself and is looking good, they dig it up again.

Here's a small part of it this morning:





And this is DEWA again.

There are master plans, they know how many buildings are going in, they know where they'll be built, they know they will need power and water. Why don't they put in at the beginning what is going to be needed in the future?

Every few months it's all dug up anew. Every time a new building gets under way the entire street is dug up. Then it's filled in, pavers put down, maybe the greenery gets established...until another building starts and the whole stretch comes up again.

Another posting of my endless complaint about the total lack of planning we have to endure.

A permanent building site.

People complain all the time that 'nothing ever gets finished' in Dubai.

Not quite true, things do get finished...but then they're dug up again.

And that's why it's a never-ending construction site, with all the traffic, the pollution, the frustration problems that causes. Not to mention a bottomless pit for money.

Most of it is due to the major problem-causing fault here. Either a total lack of planning or totally incompetent planning.

Dubai Marina is a classic.

The original plan had just one way in and out, one bridge across the northern opening which has only one lane in each direction. At the southern end the roads were completed, palm trees and landscaping in. Four bridges across the marina itself finished.

Bad planning!

A new interchange had to go in at the southern end, which meant ripping up all the just-finished roads. An additional bridge is being built across the northern opening. A fifth bridge being built across the marina.

The result is road chaos, huge amounts of wasted money, double the pollution from cement dust, years added to the completion date.

But it's not just those major stuff-ups causing endless problems. Even worse than that is the hole digging.

Buildings are finished, people move in...and a year later the entire front is dug up for cabling.

This is a stretch of the southern part of the marina, where Marina Park, Marina Pearl and Waterfront are the buildings suffering the most. The buildings were finished, people have been living in them, shops and cafes have been operating, for between one and two years.

They were looking good. Then along came the hole diggers...







Why wasn't the original cabling done to cater for the buildings that were planned?

For different reasons, there's another 'will-it-ever-be-finished' saga going on by the access to Palm Jumeirah. There we have the much-vaunted Dubai Pearl, the 'futuristic city' which would be another 'icon'.

That was going to be completed in May 2006 and it was going to look like this:



Here it is today:



Yes folks, almost two years after it was due to be finished the demolition squad is in, knocking down the buildings and digging up the foundations.

Still digging.

The last two Thursdays I've posted about the endless digging up of just-finished developments. They were about, this time, the Marina Mansions holescaping.

Last Thursday I said Yes, the road is ankle-deep in water again. The diggers will be back in a day or two. Again. Inevitably.

And here they are, this time they've tried a different place, cutting through the concrete this time...

Work standards

Last Thursday I was talking about the incessant digging up of just-completed projects, in this case the area outside Marina Mansions in Dubai Marina.

In the post I said "Laying some plastic pipe, some cables, is hardly rocket science is it. Even if the labourers can't get it right surely there's some supervision, someone qualified to check that it all fits as it should - and is paid to do just that - before the hole is filled in and the drive/footpath laid on top.

Well, they spent a few days fixing the water problem, they filled the new hole, re-laid the pavers, re-planted the garden and yesterday it was all finished.

This morning...



Yes, the road is ankle-deep in water again. The diggers will be back in a day or two. Again. Inevitably.

The endless digging drives me mad!

"Nothing's ever finished" is a phrase we hear all the time in Dubai, referring to the endless construction.

In fact it's not true. Things do get finished, and very quickly by world standards.

Then a couple of weeks later, along come the diggers, everything is ripped up and a huge hole appears! It's driving me crazy in Dubai Marina.

For months and months I'm driving an obstacle course, amongst & around grubby, dusty, garbage-strewn eye-sores of construction sites. Then one day, suddenly, the fence is taken down, the irritating red & white plastic cones and flapping bits of plastic are taken away. Very shortly after that the pavers go down and on some developments some restful green landscaping is put in.

What a relief for drivers and residents. It's all opened up, there's more space, it looks good.

Then...



These are a perfect example. Footpath and driveway finished, garden areas planted. Looking good.



That's the time they dig it all up.

Laying some plastic pipe, some cables, is hardly rocket science is it. Even if the labourers can't get it right surely there's some supervision, someone qualified to check that it all fits as it should - and is paid to do just that - before the hole is filled in and the drive/footpath laid on top.

That obviously doesn't happen. No-one checks, no-one signs off on it.

So the waste of time and money, the obstructions for motorists and pedestrians, the added pollution just goes on and on.

Beautification Tips

Handy hints for when you want to beautificate something.

Find an area with well-established greenery, preferably lawn & flower beds and a nice pathway. If it also has shrubs and/or trees it’s even more suitable.



Dig up the pavers and pile them artistically, rather than neatly, on the flowerbed.

Dig several large, deep holes in the centre of the lawn, being sure to pile the sand up on the flowerbeds next to the piles of pavers. Make sure enough there’s enough to also cover at least 45cm of the trunk of shrubs/trees.

Place red & white plastic cones around your beautification project. String a line of red & white plastic pennants along the line of cones.

Leave for as long as possible to mature.

It is important to note that to be truly successful the finished project should not look as good as the original it replaced.

Note: No visible activity is permitted, so working at night is recommended.

Holescaping

What is it with this obsession in Dubai of digging holes?

Finish a project, lay the footpath, get the landscaping done, wait until it all settles down, the grass is green, the flowers are in bloom – then surround it with plastic cones, plastic netting and dig it all up. Add piles of sand to the red and white plastic eyesore already in place to make it look really, really ugly – then go away and leave it.





Why?