_The affects of Dubai's metro on development
The task of accommodating a 308% growth in population over the last 15 years has led to the development of numerous concentrated areas of residential, industrial, retail, offices and leisure projects.
However, unlike many global cities Dubai has developed in clusters of purely commercial or residential and more recently mixed-use areas, rather than concentric environment in cities such as London or Paris where the citi es are focused on a relatively centered business district. Such cities are now evolving towards the same trend of non-concentric projects, with a particular focus on more mixed-used projects, rather than single purpose areas.
Therefore even though MRTS infrastructure became available around half way through this population and development boom, due to the sprawled topography of Dubai the use of MRTS remained vastly limited amongst the population. This low utilisation is as a result of a few prevalent factors, one being the limited connectivity of the Dubai Metro directly into its more populated neighbourhoods.
Of Dubai’s total developed area of roughly 1,070 sq km, the Dubai Metro’s 75km length means that for every kilometre of Metro there is 14.3 sq km of developed area on average, a considerable walking distance from certain stops. Whilst this compares favourably compared to other cities such as Miami (71.9 sq km), Hong Kong (15.7 sq km) and Istanbul (14.5 sq km) it lags behind cities such as Singapore, London or New York where the numbers stand at 3.6 sq km, 2.3 sq km and 2.1 sq km for every kilometre of each countries respective MRTS.
Due to this, Dubai is very reliant on private vehicles as the chosen method of transportation, with one in two people owning or renting a car. Whereas in cities where MRTS is better integrated, this figure is considerably lower with circa one in three London residents owning a car and lower still in New York City where one in five own a car.
However with increasing development in existing and upcoming neighbourhoods; a growing Metro and tram network alongside growing population density, it is expected that Dubai will fall in line with more developed cities in terms of the sq km per kilometre of the Metro track. Such developments may encourage individuals to start utilising the Metro where previously it may not have been practical.
We can already see this slowly starting to take place, according to data provided by Dubai Statistics Centre, the growth in Metro usage vastly outstrips the growth in private car ownership. In the five year period from 2011 to 2016, the number of Metro trips taken grew by 177% compared to the 9% growth in car ownership.