_The alternative side of Dubai

But this is Dubai. This is the city whose pivotally-located port, oil wealth and prominence as a global financial centre have long made it a magnet for those seeking to make their fortune, then leave again.

Now the city built on sand wants to state its permanence. Dubai is maturing in its mentality. It no longer wants to be seen as a transient, get rich quick city – a place where everything built during its construction boom in the early 2000s was the world’s first, biggest or best.

Following the global financial and real estate downturn in 2008, many questioned whether this gleaming, young city had the resilience to bounce back. And the answer is undeniably yes– but this time, with new strings to its bow.

It’s a fitting metaphor as music– and the arts in a wider sense–is one of the ways in which Dubai is carving out a new identity as a place of integrity and cultural innovation. Its aim now is to cement a reputation as the leading creative hub of the Middle East. And in turn, Dubai hopes that it will become a place where individuals and families from all over the world will want to put down roots for the long term.

The new Dubai Opera – the focal point of the city’s new Opera District, now open, bringing a major new performance space to the city. Shaped like a wooden dhow of the sort synonymous with Dubai Creek, the gleaming new opera house designed by the architect Janus Rostock is both a tribute to Dubai’s maritime history and a modern, flexible arts centre – one that can be transformed from a 2,000-seat theatre to a concert hall that wraps its orchestra in an acoustic shell.

Or its floor can be flattened to become an event space for anything from banquets to trade shows. The surrounding Opera District provides new parks and waterfront walkways, retail and high-end residential apartments, including Emaar’s 66-storey Opera Grand, close to the Burj Khalifa.

In recent years, Dubai has excelled in attracting young international talent, but mainly to its worlds of finance and business. Now it is seeking to diversify by offering the kind of culture, work hubs and social spaces that see a new generation of creative pioneers consider working and living in Dubai in the way they might in London, Berlin or New York.

The design industry in the Middle East is worth around $2.3 billion, and Dubai is perfectly placed to harness the best of East and West. Its emerging artists and fashion designers – along with major global brands - have a new home in d3, the Dubai Design District, with its high-tech and world class offices, studios and ateliers.

These are creative spaces that blur the distinction between work and play – a work space whose atmosphere (and appealing places to eat and drink) encourages its community to socialise there during afterhours. A residential element is also planned for the next phase of d3.

Whilst Dubai is well known for its leading commercial and residential architectural designs, it is now evolving to encourage more independent, artistic direction. With Dubai being home to 200 nationalities, it already has a vibrant, diverse community to provide the building blocks.

An ever-growing calendar of annual design-themed events is also helping to foster this community. Springtime in Dubai heralds the start, with Art Dubai and the SIKKA Art Fair in March, World Art Dubai and Fashion Forward in April and towards the end of the year, Dubai Design Week, which attracted 23,000 visitors and 150 designers in 2015, its first year.

Alserkal Avenue – a new arts hub that began to take shape in Dubai’s industrial quarter in 2007–appeals to a similar creative audience, with its warehouses now home to artists’ studios, galleries and educational spaces for community-led cultural initiatives and independent theatre and cinema.

Dubai’s new direction isn’t all about art – but there is a new awareness of urban design pervading its commerce.  Box Park brings a new “urban lifestyle concept”, according to its makers, Meraas, who have turned 220 shipping containers into a new shopping district that includes new, cutting edge brands such as Urbanist, OnePiece and the new women’s cycling brand Liv.

Hotels are also getting in on the act. Rove Downtown Dubai is unlike any other hotel in the city, with its fresh, cool and fun look. It is marketed as a “design-influenced, value-lifestyle” hotel and it provides the high-tech, social hub that young travellers want.

Dubai is a city with more than 400 gyms and which sees more than $1.7 billion a year on sport-related expenditure. There is little you can’t do, sports-wise, in Dubai – including, snow-skiing. But the city’s leisure scene is taking on a new hue with the proliferation of mass participation street races such as We Run Dubai, the Electric Run and Color Run - as well as the Dubai Marathon, which saw 25,000 runners last year and sits alongside such staples of Dubai’s sporting calendar as the Dubai Tour and Dubai World Cup.

Through its development of art, design, music and sport, Dubai is learning that urbanism is about far more than building the world’s biggest towers. It is also about building the diverse communities of people that live in, around, and within sight of them – and about giving them plenty of reasons to stay.

To read the full article in Dubai View click here.