Why reports of Dubai's death are greatly exaggerated

The doomsday drumbeat about Dubai's imminent death began within days of American attacks on Iran and the latter’s retaliation against the UAE and other US allies in the Gulf.

- SANJOY CHAKRAVORTY

Leading global media outlets ran roughly similar stories on the loss of Dubai’s “safe haven” identity, a scramble to leave by the uber-rich class that the city had attracted in the past two decades and its falling property market and decimated tourism economy. “Could this be the end of Dubai?” asked the New York Times. “The shine has been taken off: Dubai faces existential threat,” wrote the Guardian.

While there is no doubt that the Iran war has been a shock to the whole region—even the whole world in some ways, India very much part of it—these alarmist stories are a rush to judgement, possibly spiced with a pinch of schadenfreude. Dubai the upstart, Dubai the absurd, has been put in its place, and deservingly so. Once Western millionaires leave with their money, nothing will be left of Dubai because the city is nothing but a shell without them. A closer look at what makes Dubai tick would lead to a rather different conclusion. And any reasonable sense of world history in which ruined cities like Tokyo, Berlin and Saigon have bounced back stronger than ever should make us think more seriously about cities and what makes them resilient, even indestructible. The rush to judgement is the outcome of a biased, perhaps racist, elevation of style over substance.