Dubai Guide
Sheikh Zayed Road
Around 3km south of the Creek, the upwardly mobile suburbs of southern Dubai begin in spectacular style with the massed skyscrapers of Sheikh Zayed Road – a vast ten-lane highway flanked by an extraordinary sequence of neck-cricking high-rises. This is the modern city at its most futuristic, flamboyant and internationalist, a million miles away from the cluttered old souks and chuntering abras of the city centre.
In many ways, Sheikh Zayed Road represents the emblematic heart of modern Dubai and the city's insatiable desire to offer more luxury, more glitz and more storeys than the competition, embodied by the stunning Emirates Towers and the string of top hotels, restaurants and bars that line the strip, not to mention the ever-rising Burj Dubai tower, soon to become the world's tallest building. Not that Sheikh Zayed Road's appeal is exclusively architectural. The real spirit of the road can be found within the towers themselves, in the cavernous interiors of the various five-star hotels, which offer a disorienting snapshot of Dubai's cosmopolitan – but often schizophrenically separated – worlds, from noisy English pubs through shisha-scented Lebanese restaurants to über-cool postmodern bars and clubs – the perfect venue for a quintessentially multicultural Dubaian evening.
Sheikh Zayed Road proper runs all the way from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, and forms the principal road link between the two emirates, as well as between the various widely separated areas of southern Dubai. In practice, however, when people refer to "Sheikh Zayed Road" they are usually talking about the section in central Dubai between Interchange no.1 and the Trade Centre Roundabout (also known as Za'abeel Roundabout), ie from Dusit Dubai hotel to just north of the Emirates Towers, which is home to the strip's densest concentration of hotels, restaurants and shops. This is the sense in which we're using the name.
There are just two ways of getting across the road. The first is the pedestrian bridge that runs from opposite the Fairmont hotel to the World Trade Centre complex. The second, slightly further south, is the pedestrian underpass, which runs alongside the road tunnel from directly outside the Crowne Plaza and brings you out just north of the Emirates Towers. Further south, there is no way of crossing from one side of the roaring ten-lane highway to the other. If you're staying at Dusit Dubai, for instance, and you want to eat at the Shangri La, on the opposite side of the road, you'll have to take a cab.
Burj Dubai
Website: www.burjdubaiskyscraper.com
Address: Just south of Interchange 1 on Sheikh Zayed Road
Given the city's current striving to possess the biggest, priciest, glitziest version of everything – from underwater hotels to mile-long shopping malls – it should come as no suprise that Dubai should have the world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai ("Dubai Tower"). Construction on the tower began in April 2005, under the direction of Chicago firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (whose credits include the famous Sears Tower in Chicago, the world's tallest building until 1997). The tower's final dimensions remain a closely guarded secret, lest other countries attempt to trump the building's record-breaking status, though it's believed it will finally top out at around 800m, with some 160 storeys – dwarfing the current world's tallest building, the 508-metre Taipai 101 tower in Taipei, Taiwan, as well as other proposed buildings including New York's Freedom Tower (the successor to the destroyed World Trade Centers, and another Skidmore, Owings and Merrill project).
Ironically, despite the Burj Dubai headlong race for the skies, it's possible that it might be outdone by yet another Dubai mega-development, the Al Burj tower at the Dubai Waterfront project; rumour has it that it may be the first tower to break the one-kilometre mark.
Dubailand
Website: www.dubailand.ae
The biggest thing yet in a city of increasingly big things, the vast new Dubailand development promises to make every other theme park and entertainment complex in the world look like a small kids' playground with an ice-cream van. Occupying a huge swathe of land on the southern side of the city, Dubailand is intended, quite simply, to become the planet's single largest and most spectacular tourist attraction, and to be the engine which drives Dubai's tourist industry forward for the next several decades. The development will comprise a mix of theme parks, shopping malls, sporting and leisure facilities (including vast numbers of new hotels and restaurants) and residential areas, covering a staggeringly large 280 square kilometres – twice the size of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, currently the largest amusement park complex in the world – and adding a very significant new chunk to the city's size.
Read more ▼
- Sight(s) ▼
- Sports and Outdoor ▼