Smart Cities: The next stage of

urbanization in the UAE

Sula Al Faulaij
S00016254
Dr. Malek Mohammad
English 102
Summary/ Analysis/ Synthesis Paper
Date: 28 July 2015

The concept of smarter cities is getting more popular in the entire world. But in case of the area
of Gulf it is much more important.

But it is not happening at a very fast pace, this is a firm

development. The year of 2014 is especially of great worth regarding the urbanization in the area
of Gulf. The main focus is that how the creation of jobs and using the state of art technology
can help to facilitate the process of moving toward the urban form. The article of Smart Cities:
The next stage of urbanization in the UAE was published on 10 April 2014, in Gulf News and it
was written by JYOTI LALCHANDANI. It is already known that urbanization in the oil based
economies of the region of Gulf is the most important concern of today as these areas are
evolving into cities, and they were previously not so much developed and they were dominated
by rural areas and un developed sites. But the main issue that is elaborated in this article is the
ways that can facilitate the process, how development of jobs and use of state of art technology
and innovation and aid from outside is becoming a facilitator in the process. The author of the
article is the vice chair person of the group and director of management of area of Africa, Middle
East and Turkey in the ICT world market intellect and counseling firm global information firm.
As mentioned earlier, the main theme of the article is explaining that sustainability is the
foundation of smart urbanization. The changes in climate and less availability of water resources
are major causes of hindrance in the Gulf region. As there is more development the more
pollution and emission of carbon is taking place that is making environment not much good to
live. So that is the main issue that it should be examined to stop such bad emissions and solve the
water issue. the next thing is how the citizens can be involved in the process, that they will be
allowed greater freedom in use of media and the availability of information should be for all and
transparent so that they can participate in the process and third thing is the creative and
innovative way of doing all the procedure, like change the relations of workers and citizens,
change the ways of doing business, in short the process of innovation should be institutionalized.
This kind of projects to make environment friendly cities are the main trend in the area of Gulf
and Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi are the initials of the concept who are perusing this idea.
These area wide Smart city initiatives will have a two sided concentration; the first one is on
enhancing the level of the present cities and the other one is the initiative associated to the green
field. Municipalities in the area initiated to distribute assets for the progress of the Smart City
plan that fulfill the particular requirements of their citizens. Like the Dubai is start efforts for

providing the greater number of buildings with green environment through a Dubai Building
Code that is anticipated to the started in near future. This must be effective to get rid of the
carbon footprints with the association of the Smart City techniques.
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority have started a plan for five years that is applied on
250,000 smart meters in the UAE. IDC predicted the enhancement concentration on these Smart
City initiatives to boost up the other Smart City plans in the GCC.
Usually the leaders of the city are questions about the way of changing their cities into Smart
City and the cities that can be included in the list of the Smart Cities. To answer such questions,
the IDC Government Insight make a model showing the features and maturity of the Smart City
that also explains the major excellent areas and the ways with the five steps to get the maturity to
make available the road map for municipalities that desired to make and apply a plan of the
Smart City.
IDC anticipate that in the 2014, just 15% of the cities around the globe will attain the second
stage of maturity and just 5% will attain the third step of the maturity associated to the Smart
City Plan. Mostly cities will attain the first step of the maturity that are featured by the
businesses as general decision making process, not defined monetary budget and the plans across
department and techniques and information that are not delivered across corporation.
The fourth step needs the application of the formal procedures that makes the cities to anticipate
the requirements of their citizens and businesses and make available the precautionary services
even before the issues occur. To attain the last phase, it will require the long period of time of 1015 years.
Dubai is in an excellent position to get the maturity phase due to its powerful vision of the Smart
City. The city has build excellent push in form of the citizen involvement by making available
the major services through Smart Phones and making its association with the environmental
systems by concentrating deeply on the provision of services, techniques, suppliers and leaders
of the ICT.

The article is well written in the since that it gave a new perspective of urbanization and focused
on the citizens involvement, technological and aspects of innovation so that the development can
be done in a way that does not harm the environment. It has given a new perspective of the
concept of development into cities by analyzing the facilities and keeping in view that the
environment and people are safe.
it is known that in the modern era all the world is moving toward the concept of becoming urban,
but the new perspective was given by this article that how it can be done given the particular
issues of Gulf region and by involving people, innovation and technology in its best way and in
the same time keeping the environment and people safe and making a place good for living in
short the concept of Smart Cities.
This article gives a valuable insight, into new perspective of going urban, so it will be used as a
basis of my future work and assignments. I will further enhance my research on this topic by
elaborating it in further detail and infesting its other endeavors.
Reference:
LALCHANDANI, JYOTI. Smart Cities: The next stage of urbanization in the UAE. Gulf
news.com. 10 April 2014. Web. 25 July 2015