Yes, Abu Dhabi has a beautiful new Corniche. The 5 km stretch of Corniche is one of the best places to be in in the city. And it’s clean, not a speck on the ground, no dirt that has stuck permanently becauase it’s been there for years. But that’s not because the Abu Dhabi Municipality is handling the Corniche and Abu Dhabi well. It’s becauase the private real estate company that’s been handed over the Corniche is doing a good job at keeping it clean.

And that’s it. Only half a kilometer away from the Corniche, into the city, the city transforms into one that looks like a ‘poverty outgrowth’ of a poverty stricken third world city. Pavements are ridden with masses of uncleaned pigeon droppings and dirt that’s been there for years, buildings became shabby with no laws imposed on the real estate companies for cleaning them and their surrounding pavements.

Cities usually have a belt of poverty. Abu Dhabi has a core of poverty. The developments being marketed as Abu Dhabi ‘proper’ have sprouted on the peropheries: those are the Corniche, Yas, Reem, saadiyat Islands, and probably the Mangrove Corniche, look new and clean, and then the core ofthe city, the real city, is as dirty and shabby are an outgrowth of a city in Bangladesh. And the problem is the hypocricy that comes along with all this: this dirty city centre is not an area with cheap rent; on the contrary, any building in this area is marketed as “prime location”, “tem minutes away from Abu Dhabi Mall and the Corniche”, and prices of flats soar to 250,000 Dhs ( 67,000 USD) a year.

But why has all this happened. It wasn’t like that back in the 90s. Back then the municipality washed roads and pavements, and even washed the trees (which look pretty grin right now) on the roads. Now, the municipality has been downsized and it’s responsibilities given to private firms, as part of ‘development’: so if a real estate company owns a building or a development, its cleans and maintains it, whether it wishes to do that or not. It seems there is no law forcing ADPC or Asteco to clean the outside of buildings  or the environmental services company Veolia to clean the pavements.  So fine, give private firms public responsibility, but make sure there are stringent laws they have to go by. And we don’t need to wait for the development of Abu Dhabi to finishm or to wait for Abu Dhabi 2030: Abu Dhabi was clean long ago before the careless money-grabbing frenzy when it came to the city organiastion broke out.

It irks me and makes me jealous that Dubai is so clean. Everywhere, Dubai is clean: in the old town where the old souk and Creek harbour is, to private real estate developments like The Greens or The Walk or Dubai Downtown, to places under the rsponsibiity of the municipality. Urban development is ‘balanced’ at least in terms of public places, cleanliness, maintenance and amenity.

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