One of the reasons I haven't posted (other than the excruciating perfectionism I put myself through when I write) is I haven't done much lately. I'm having a harder time finding things to do every day. Not that I'm in a bad headspace; far from it actually. I'm pretty content. But my life has been lacking adventure. I've run out of malls to explore. As I've mentioned the beaches here are pretty weird. I haven't been out of the city in weeks. I have visions of hiking in the desert, finding a wild, untamed beach, checking out some falconry... but without someone to hang out with during the day, how to go about it?
I find my audacious title laughable at this point. I'll admit it was borrowed from the title of the book about Bombay, Maximum City, because I had the idea of Abu Dhabi as an exploding world capital with intersections of culture and commerce that shed light on our world. But during plenty of cynical moments I have thought there's nothing "maximum" about this place at all, unless it were the number of malls or SUVs.
Maybe one of these days I'll be dune-bashing, or jet-skiing, or sipping a latte at Starbucks in Marina Mall, and suddenly have a maximal epiphany. I'll keep you posted.
Let me tell you the major logistical reason why I have been having a hard time getting out. It isn't the brutal, invincible weather. Actually, yes it is, the weather has a lot to do with it. Did I already mention it's really hot here? And also really humid? It seems so unfair to have desert heat with oppressive humidity and no hope of rain, but there you are. You may be able to put up with the heat, and even appreciate it. But you can't forget about it, you have to plan for it at all times. The threat of heat exhaustion is very real.
Beyond that, there's almost nowhere to go on foot without a lot of effort and dare I say danger. Abu Dhabi is a car town. Well, hell, it's a car world, what do you want? But Abu Dhabi is really a car town. You think Americans are the car-centric ones? AD will astonish you. Cars rule here. A pretty high percentage of the population own them, and fuel is cheap (duh). Everyone drives, everywhere. The harsh weather would
tame those few with any pedestrian spirit at all. And they love
cars here; Arab guys love sports cars and all kinds of car racing and just about everything to do with cars.And everything is bent to this reality. Abu Dhabi hardly existed fifty years ago; where there was nothing now there's an enormous wealthy metropolis. It was practically built all at once, and
strictly as a tribute to the automobile. The streets are in excellent condition, and they are laid out cleverly, in something of a grid, to maximize the flow of traffic. And flow it does, and rapidly too. This is well and good if you're a city administrator concerned with keeping things moving and keeping your economy booming. But there's one huge problem: when they were planning it, there was no thought about pedestrians. None. Abu Dhabi is pedestrian hell.
It's not that there's nowhere to walk. Walking is possible here. It's just very hectic, very aggravating -- and very risky. When I took my first walk in the city, I could hardly believe my eyes. It's as if
Robert Moses rose from his grave as an evil phantom and designed a city from scratch. Every street resembles his monstrous Boulevard Of Death. I've always feared and loathed Queens Blvd with a passion, along with the soulless, ugly, traffic-choked central corridor of Queens which it epitomizes. Abu Dhabi makes Queens seem like Fire Island.
Every street is extremely wide, with at least six lanes (but effectively eight or even ten if you count the turning lanes), divided by a narrow median. Every street is very busy; Abu Dhabi is as busy and full of hustle-and-bustle as any world capital. And the thousands of cars move very fast. The speed limit in the city is 60 kph (37 mph). Which is too fast, but most drivers go a lot faster; no one follows speed limits here.
Sidewalks exist, but they were not designed for comfort. They are often not much more than median strips dividing the street from a parking lot, with irregular shapes; and they're unusually high, making them cumbersome to climb up and down, especially for older people and kids. There is no such thing as an unbroken sidewalk; busy lanes leading to and from the parking lots constantly interrupt. The path is frequently blocked by lightpoles and traffic signs. In other places, sidewalks are just the incidental concrete in front of shops or malls.
These are the vast, hot, imposing corporate plaza spaces with no life and no utilitarian function decried by progressive urban planners like Jan Gehl and William H. Whyte. Sometimes the sidewalk gives way to nothing but a dispiriting patch of dirt, especially in front of one of the many construction sites.
And there's no relief in sight. It's not like any other city I've been in: there's no older, more genteel downtown area with narrower streets that are a bit safer and more pleasant. There
are no narrow streets at all, anywhere. No pedestrianized zones. (What? Keep dreaming.) No residential streets as we would think of them. No human scale. Wherever people live in the city, they have to put up with the same layout, the same kind of traffic, the same confounding inconvenience and danger. Abu Dhabi is a huge mortifying grid of Boulevards Of Death.
The only way all of this is broken up for those on foot is with the strange alleys and lots which exist behind and between the buildings. It's hard to picture if you haven't seen it, but since every street is more or less a huge boulevard, and there is no such thing as a side street or residential lane, there is quite a lot of space left in the alleyways. I'm not sure if they planned these spaces, or if they built the buildings and streets and then just forgot about the leftover space. A lot of public life necessarily takes place in these
weird free zones; there tend to be lots of cornershops, restaurants, dry cleaners, pharmacies, and so on; people hang out and children play. Sounds promising doesn't it? If all this open space had been planned with a vision Abu Dhabi might have been a pedestrian's dream.
But sadly almost as a rule these lots are poorly planned and regulated and pretty hard to navigate -- chaotic archipelagos of parking lots tied together by random, often barely defined access roads, and broken up by outbuildings (powerplants, toolsheds), trash dumpsters and construction equipment. People drive and even park almost wherever they feel like it in these places, and in fact, they are almost always completely overrun by cars. In their dull way they are as annoying as the main roads.
Obviously the cars move more slowly here, but they are if possible more reckless -- swerving up and down and all over the place, looking for parking spaces, going much faster than you are used to in a parking lot. Drivers cut you off quite cheerfully, with no qualms at all -- so puzzling and frustrating if you're used to at least some courtesy in such situations. The sightlines are often pretty bad because of the irregular, haphazard style of parking and sometimes cars appear very suddenly around a bend.
That's the final element in this perfect storm: the way people drive here. Common disparaging terms for bad driving such as "maniac" and "asshole" don't really apply in Abu Dhabi, unless they apply to everyone. Concepts such as "defensive driving" and "following the speed limit and traffic laws" are considered quaint here; in fact, some people seriously believe that driving carefully will get them killed. Everyone speeds, sometimes suicidally. If you are following the speed limit, you will be quickly and dangerously tailgated. No one signals. NO ONE signals; in fact it seems no one thinks ahead or follows patterns at all. It's normal to see a driver cutting four lanes of traffic with no signal, only to insert themselves recklessly in between two other cars, making up no ground at all. It never seems daring, just pointless and stupid. People pass on the shoulder or in construction lanes. Obviously no one uses seatbelts and everyone uses their phones. And obviously no one stops or even slows for pedestrians, who I suppose are seen as not much better than dogs or sheep. Where did all of this reckless haste and obliviousness come from? Is it an Arab thing, or did it seep over from the Subcontinent? Who knows.
Let me illustrate what it's like to cross a street, any street in Abu Dhabi. It truly is like a game of Frogger. Let's start on the misshapen slab of concrete and masonry which passes for a "sidewalk." Your objective, the other side of the street, is fifty yards away; people on the other side seem small; there are several ways to die between here and there. You see six lanes of traffic, all constantly filled with speeding cars except when stopped by the lights. However, even before you start crossing these six lanes you have to cross a turning lane, the curbed "channel" as I call it which arcs away from the regular street and allows drivers to constantly make right turns at the intersection. No light or signal of any kind governs these right turns, and no one stops for
pedestrians who are waiting. When it's busy, it's quite impossible to get across. You look up, and see that you actually have a walk signal to cross the street, but you can't even start because no one is yielding in the turning lane. It's maddening to see their faces, one after the other, as they swerve by so closely, with no acknowledgement. Finally you see a short gap in the oncoming cars, and jog across. This is not the most dangerous thing you'll do. You are now on another, triangular curbed slab between the turning "channel" and the main road. You are about to lose your light
-- it's flashing. You have a choice: wait, or take the risk of running to get across the street. You decide to be safe and wait for the next light. Okay, so you're waiting. On this curbed triangle, you are standing with relative safety, but quite close to the rushing cars which are now passing in front and constantly zooming behind in the turning lane. It's noisy, and a bit intimidating. You realize that at these speeds any mishap (a wreck, God forbid a drunk driver) would hardly be contained by the curb.
Finally you get a walk signal. You very carefully look to make sure no one is going to make an illegal right turn as you step out into the street -- perhaps a driver missed the turning lane and decides to recklessly
make the right-angle turn; you've seen it before so of course it's possible. Okay, you're crossing the first three lanes in apparent safety. But you look and see that you shouldn't cross the next three, the opposite lanes of the street. You don't have a signal yet, as the traffic system is allowing for those drivers to make left turns. You stop and wait again on the very narrow median separating the six lanes. Now you really feel exposed. The median is perhaps three feet wide. You share it with a few other people, it becomes crowded quickly; some of them are off the curb and in the street. You notice others jaywalking between the cars and trucks which are zipping by very close as they make those left turns. Some of them are making U-turns, and these are even more
intimidating as they roll right around you in about 330 degrees. You notice the large traffic sign right next to you makes a pretty huge blind spot for everyone who crosses. Now it's your time to cross the last three lanes. You have to move pretty fast, as the lights don't really last long. You keep a sharp eye out for oncoming cars from anywhere -- the way people drive here you never know. You arrive at the opposite triangle thingey, and, of course, wait for the right turns on this side. You're about to step across when an SUV speeds up to get into the turning lane and cuts you off pretty badly. Could've been a close one if you hadn't been paying
attention.
Finally, you're across. Congratulations; you will have to do it again, many more times to get anywhere and back again. Not to mention navigating the tricky parking lots and alleys. There really aren't any pleasant places to walk anywhere; everything is climbing and clambering and dodging and shuffling from one awkward space to the next. Add to this the heat, which is a real factor. With scorching light reflecting off all the concrete and steel and dust, that damned humidity, few trees, and hundreds of cars and trucks rushing, the ambient temperature feels like 130℉. Heat and danger. It's
overwhelming, exhausting. It's a one-two punch that just makes you give up and want to go home. (There, you can play Frogger more safely by clicking here.) No wonder most
visitors just give in and take cabs everywhere. Cabs are pretty cheap here, and I have found most of the drivers to be pretty friendly and much better behind the wheel than the average. (What about public transport you ask? Well, there are no trains here. There are buses... but let's just say that I've never, ever heard of an expat taking a bus.)
Think I'm overdoing it a bit with all the "danger" stuff? Ask the World Health Organization. The number of people killed in traffic in the United Arab Emirates has taken on the feeling of a public emergency here (at least in the government and media; whether most citizens care is another story). Well over a thousand
people died on the roads last year. For a population of four million that's not only not good, it's reprehensible. The WHO estimates the traffic death rate here could be as high as 37 per 100,000 of the population per year, and that places the UAE firmly in the running for having the deadliest roads in the world. It easily leads the Persian Gulf region despite advantages in wealth and resources, and doubles the world average of 18. (By comparison the deadly roads
in the USA produce 15 deaths per 100,000 people. The UK comes in at about 5. Whatever they're doing in Jolly Olde to keep people alive on the roads, the rest of the world should take note.) Indeed the UAE is ranked on the scale of road carnage with the poorest and most backwards and dangerous nations such as Libya and Angola. This should not be. True, the UAE is considered a developing nation, but I think its official IMF classification goes something like, "Insanely Developing Nation With Shit Tons Of Oil And Cash." It's too rich and peaceful a place for this awful distinction. Even the number of traffic injuries last year, 11,000, is pretty grim and mind-boggling. And bad as it is, by all objective measures things are even worse in the capital city of Abu Dhabi.
The government and the media here have teamed up to try to educate the population about safe driving, especially young Arab men. You want my opinion? It's not going to work. Aggressive, reckless driving is permanently ingrained in young guys here. It's just how they are, and they aren't afraid of the consequences, including death. No amount of outraged news editorials and PSAs are going to answer that.
One day on a trip through the desert, Amo and I observed with amazement the other drivers on the very long, very straight highway. One after another SUV would pass us on the left at ludicrous speeds, coming up the straightaway as if to take off like a jet; it was cartoonish. Occasionally they would swerve insanely in front of us to cut someone else off. This is the default mode of driving on the highway. The next morning I read that five young Emirati men had died that same evening when their SUV flipped after a tire blew out on a desert highway. The police said they were speeding. Of course they were speeding.
But what's really reprehensible is how often pedestrians suffer and die because of this driving culture. About a third of road deaths here are pedestrians and other "vulnerable users of the road" such as bicyclists. 26 pedestrians were killed in the city of Abu Dhabi alone in just the first 71 days of this year; 117 were injured. Just before we arrived here in July, the city was shocked by the hit-and-run deaths of three young girls as they were crossing a busy road with their nanny, who was severely injured. As I write this, an Australian citizen lies in a coma with almost no hope of survival; he was probably also a victim of hit-and-run, struck in the early morning while he was riding his bike. His case is particularly sobering because he was a champion triathlete, probably as fit and strong as one can be. To hear of his life snuffed out in the blink of an eye by some wayward automotive machine reminds us that the feelings of vitality and invinciblity that characterize young men's reckless driving are pure myth -- stupid, deadly myth.
With my own frustrating experiences I'm apalled but not surprised to hear of the unlucky ones who didn't make it. But this article and photo essay highlights the desperate choices faced by some of the poorest workers here. People who can't afford a cab like I can, who daily make suicidal dashes across busy highways just to have lunch. This glimpse is backed up by WHO data that most of the 1.2 million people who die worldwide each year in car accidents are poor, and half of them are pedestrians. But as is typical in America, this problem is greeted here with a shrug or even with scorn: it's their fault, they were jaywalking, they were breaking the law, they're crazy, they're stupid, they're drunk.
But the continual bad press from all of the bloodshed has spurred the government to improve the lot of pedestrians in Abu Dhabi. Taking a look at the list of what they consider improvements, I'm not sure I'm impressed. What's lowering a few curbs and painting a few stripes going to accomplish in this vast treacherous grid? Don't get me wrong, in my short time here, I've found the government refreshingly sincere and candid about making life better and more pleasant. This action came just days after intense media and public pressure about the tragedies with the little girls and the Aussie triathlete. How often would you see any government in the U.S. act so quickly? I just think that in the case of Abu Dhabi's roads, it's too little too late. To really fix the problem, they'd have to transform the selfish, shortsighted car culture here and I don't think that's going to happen soon.
This is the mindset addressed by Gehl throughout his career. Famously he argues that to have to push a button to cross a street (yeah, you see those buttons here too) automatically places the needs of the car over the pedestrian, makes the person on foot unconsciously feel as if they have to apply to go on their way. I feel the same way about the pedestrian bridges and underpasses here. I wouldn't get rid of them, they're the only safe way across some of the busier roads. But of course there's nothing like enough of them, and they make you feel as if crossing the street is special, an undertaking, a privilege instead of a right.
It's not enough to make streets safer; what is needed is to make them more comfortable, cleaner, less noisy, more attractive and more utilitarian. In other words, to make them for people, not for machines. Places people want to linger, and live their lives, not just hurry through. Reading this interview with Gehl, covering what he accomplished in Copenhagen and what like minds have been doing to revolutionize places like Melbourne and Portland (pictured here), I
became a bit wistful. I've enjoyed my time here, but when you literally can't go anywhere without worrying about being flattened by an SUV, it puts a damper on things. Makes you want to stay at home. Even people who don't care about urban reform or sustainable living will complain about how hard the traffic is to deal with here.Gehl has done studies which prove most people can't even realize or express how much traffic disturbs them until they experience a different, more peaceful urban environment. The collective will to make cities not only more sustainable but more liveable is growing in the world. It even exists here -- Abu Dhabi's rulers mean quite well, and there is no end of oil money to be spent on beautiful parks and gardens and islands for recreation and happiness. And don't let my apocalyptic rantings be the end of discussion; there are a lot of pleasant and nice places in this city. But crucially, every day at the street level in Abu Dhabi the larger vision is not being realized.
That was incredibly interesting. I've always loved reading what you write. I was hoping that you'd spend a lot of time writing there. I'm sorry that your muse isn't cooperating with you!
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