The Living space and the Industrial Space are the Same

With no urban planning, the living space became an industrial zone. In Abu Dhabi proper, i.e. below Al Khaleej Al Arabi street and before Mushrif/Defence street, the whole city is one industrial zone with building materials’ shops locating themselves as shops under each building, and trucks loading and unloading all day long. The city has become an arid industrial place. Even when sophisticated looking towers come up (in already congested residential areas), the places that rent out the showrooms are building materials’ shops. Despite all the congestion, this hasn’t been halted or organized.

One hypocritical ”marketing” newspaper article.

A Khaleej Times article in its “advertising supplement” dated march 30,2010, entitled “Abu Dhabi in Progress” calls Abu Dhabi a “city in pursuit of excellence” and a very pedestrian city, and posts a photo of the new Corniche! Yes, there is very pedestrian and beautiful, but that’s only for that stretch of 5 kms. And it was pedestrian since it was contrcuted in the 80s; it didn’t become pedestrain because of the recent ‘devepolment’, albeit much more beautiful. Furthermore, walking in any neighbourhood below airport road and before Musrhif, in this core of shabbiness, is a feat among the dirt, pigeon droppings, broken pavments, and alleyways that have become storage areas of shops around. So if we take all the city and not jsut the Corniche, it’s become the most unpedestrian, un-civilian place to be in. People live in their flats and all there is around them are building material companies, and the space is so overcrowded with cars that neighbourhoods look like car scrap dumps. Not a single glimpse of greenery. Abu Dhabi looks like a car scrap dump.  

If there were urban planning, who would have ever accepted that building material companies turn the city neighbourhoods into what looks like construction zones. What’s funny is that as soon as the contruction of Dubai-style impeccable towers is finished you find building material shops opening up in them!

Dirty pedestrian pavements in prime locations in Abu dhabi, just 1/2km from advertised places like the Corniche and Emirates Palace

Not very pedestrian friendly neighbourhoods.

Most of Abu Dhabi apart from the few touristic streches looks like this

The only three buildings in our neighbourhood that are always clean and whose pavements are clean because the owner wants that.

Pavement around the Vision Furnished Apartments. Cleanliness and a bit of landscaping is possible, with coffee shops on the streets, but this cleanliness is only privately undertaken. Ten meters away you see the condition in the other photos

Cleanliness from a private initiative. The owner likes it this way, but there’s law no to make it this way.

Building Cleaning

Do the real estate companies have a law that forces them to clean buildings at certain intervals? No. Our building has become dirty after not being cleaned for a year and is infested with bird droppings. So I gave ADCP (the real state company handling our building) a call. The person there told me he’d send someone to assess the building. a few days later I gave that person another call, his reply was that the person who came to assess foud that the building does not need cleaning. I can barely look out of my window which has become smitten with dirt and bird droppings. we can’t clean them ourselves because the windown type is the one that open inside out. And its not just the windows anyway, the walls of the building itself are dirty and decorated with bird droppings.

so is there a law that enforces building cleaning for the sake of the ‘city image’? No. If owners want their buildings clean and well maintained, they get a private company to do it. If we don’t keep calling ADCP and fight with them until they find that the dirt on the building is worthy of being cleaned, or if we don’t have an owner that wants the building clean as a private initiative, then buildings will never be cleaned here.

Our building is not in a poverty stricken area (not that those areas don’t deserve being clean), this is in Abu Dhabi downtown, marketed as prime location, 2 bedroom flats in these buildings cost up to 170,000 AED.

But what about the cleaning of the building from the inside? Are there any laws for that? There is no system in these real estate companies that ensures that elevators, stairway halls, and everything gets cleaned. ADCP supplies the ‘security’ guy with detergent containers and is asked to mop the entrance. That’s it. We pay him a bit extra to clean the outside pavement, and he says he’s just doing it for us.  Using the stairway hall of our building and any other, is like going into a derelict mansion.

Again, why is all this cleaner in Dubai, in prime areas and non-prime areas?

A city that doesn’t get cleaned

Back in the eighties, pigeon population had overgrown in Abu Dhabi as much as they have these days. The government decided to give them food with tranquilizers, picked up the sleeping pigeons and shipped them off somewhere else! Pigeons in cities are considered pests, and environmentalists urge people not to get them uesd to being fed, because they will not be able to survive on their own. Their droppings also carry hazards and disease.

People place food for them on window sills on pavements, causing the buildings and below pavements to become overridden with droppings. If anyone cares, a law could be passed forbidding people to feed them, in the same way the ‘City Image Monitoring’ goes round fining people wet the streets when they’re cleaning the cars because it’s aesthetically unpleasing!  More stringent laws on cleaning buildings and pavements by real estate could be passed: why are only the buildings and the pavement on the Corniche the only clean ones. does the municipality just check that facade and leave eveything else? 100 meters away from the shiny corniche, on Khalifa street, you’re back into what looks like a neglected unclean third world city.

The Municipality, Veolia, the city cleanliness…

Abu Dhabi pavements in ‘prime location’ areas.

Abu Dhabi pavements in ‘prime location’ areas.

Ok it’s good to collect recycable material, but these are kept like this all days long making the pavements look like garbage dump areas

Ok it’s good to collect recycable material, but these are kept like this all days long making the pavements look like garbage dump areas not one kilometer away from affluent spots

Spinneys liquor store keeps its facade green and clean, as nice as the Corniche is. It’ll be too much asking the municipality and public bodies to place this much greenery around every building, but some re-greening with a tree at every few meters would have made a different to the arid look of the city.

Makes a difference

So I called the municipality to see what happens if i complain about the condition of the pavements and garbage in our neighbourhood (around Najda). The municipality told they’ve handed over this ersponsiblity to Veolia Environmental Services. Called Veolia, they said “we tell the shop owners that they have to clean in front of them and we inspect regularly, and everything IS clean.” I asked them to come and see the situation, that long ago I used to see the municipality spray water pressure on the pavements to clean them, that they are not infested with bird droppings. The person on the other line said he’d make someone come to inspect the place. That’s it. Nothing came out of it.

New ‘development’ vocab and the garbage Drums

While Abu Dhabi’s going down as an urban place, suddenly big words started coming into the picture: now everything is vision, mission, strategy, development, environment friendly and sustianable. So long ago, picking up the garbage from the garbage dumps was a much cleaner process without any of these big words. Now, the garbage cleaning company does ‘environmental services’ and yet the area around the garbage drums have turned into the dirtiest places, and the drums are placed anywhere, some on the facade of main streets. Why aren’t the pavements around garbage dumps in Dubai so sticky and smelly and fly infested?