September 4, 2011

Dubai's habit of grouping things together

Today I drove in Dubai by myself, beyond just my neighborhood. I am really proud of myself. I took Burak to work since we are sharing one car. He should be out of the city/country during the week so I can use the car and carpool occasionally.

He works in Dubai Internet City. Then I was thinking how odd it might be to most Americans that there are these little cities inside Dubai:
Dubai Internet City - lots of tech places and some other groups
Dubai Media City - has the media
Dubai Knowledge Village - has universities
Dubai Industrial City
Dubai Investments Park 1 and 2
Dubai Land Residence
Dubai Maritime City
Dubai Outlet City
Dubai Sports City
Dubai Studio City (we live near this)
Dubai Motor City (we live near this)

It seems so simple and yet very genius. Group the like companies together.

Dubai does that grouping in their malls as well. In most of the malls I have seen, especially Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates, like stores are right next to each other. For example, there are baby stores side by side on a top floor of Dubai Mall which makes it very nice to price shop and compare items. In the US, this would  probably be unheard of and there would be contracts against putting the competition right next to each other in commercial real estate.


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