Photo caption: The master plan for Nakheel's Worlds of Discovery would see a new island off of Palm Jebel Ali reshaped into the silhouette of a killer whale. In Dubai, Christopher Hawtorne writes, developments are taking shape on virgin sand or new islands, making the emirate "an unusually pure, unfiltered example of what new cities look like in the age of globalization". Randi Sokoloff / The National 

Every once in a while, a journalist comes to Dubai and gets it. Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, is one of those select few. In a long essay, he describes in accurate terms the state of the economy, but goes on to say that "charting the economic collapse and its fallout is not the only story worth telling about Dubai as the global downturn grinds on". The rest of the piece details what he calls a "new kind of urbanism", where the city is really divided into miniature cities that operate in and of themselves.

"It's as if Dubai's leaders had taken sections from cities around the world that appealed to them -- or that they decided would appeal to foreign investors -- and imported them wholesale to the shores of the Persian Gulf."

One reason for this is the fact that there are so many "master developments", where a developer controls the fate of a huge piece of land. In most cities, a developer is never dealing with much more than a city block. The essay is a must-read for anyone interested in architecture. I like that he calls the style of architecture, "cruise ship modern". (The National looked at the "end of fantasy architecture" in the region a couple weeks ago. See that article here.)

Perhaps the most important point comes three quarters the way through:

"Dubai's new neighborhoods ... have been colonized by builders simply pushing out into virgin desert -- or, in the case of the emirate's now-iconic island developments, into the gulf. That makes Dubai -- its neighborhoods unburdened by history, its developers unconstrained by zoning codes, preservation battles or community activism -- an unusually pure, unfiltered example of what new cities look like in the age of globalization."

This essay is in stark contrast to the cliché-ridden rewrite of dozens of previous stories in today's edition of The Times, titled "Dubai's dream is built on sand". While the journalist, John Arlidge, at least tries to get some more facts and numbers in the piece than the average reporter on a hit-and-run mission to the UAE, he seems uninterested in the efforts underway across the country to get through the global financial crisis.

In other news, Nakheel seems to be tightening some of its rules after several incidences of third-party developers "absconding", Emirates Business 24/7 reports. The information in this article is rather oblique. For example, here is the top line of the story: "Nakheel, the real estate development arm of Dubai World, has stopped allowing mobilisation on concept design after a number of third-party developers have gone absconding, Emirates business has learnt."

More news of the day after the jump ...

The Saudi Arabian property market could be in for a period of sustained growth now that the country has adopted a "Fannie Mae" system for lending to home buyers, Dr Mohamed Ramady writes in The National. There has been buzz about a similar system in the UAE for a few months. We wrote about that back in March. See the article here.

Prices in Dubai Silicon Oasis, International City and Discovery Gardens have "stabilised in the past three months, Anjana Kumar reports in Emirates Business 24/7. Profit margins for construction companies have dropped by as much as 50 per cent, some companies tell Joseph George.

In a further affirmation that distressed asset funds are setting up in the UAE, Uta Harnischfeger and Mike Jalili interview the regional chief of Morgan Stanley about the topic. We first looked at the topic on June 9. See the article here.