Dubai's Arab Spring dividend

If Dubai is a business (it is, by the way), then the Arab Spring is paying dividends. Not in metaphorical political freedom dividends for its citizens, but in real dividends.

The ever-haunting question of the recession, “Who will live in all these flats and houses?” is being answered. It’s not the answer that the city planners or the real estate developers expected, but it is an answer: they are the emigrants resulting from the Arab Spring.

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Many newcomers to Dubai, including those from the Arab Spring, have the intent to move here for two years, whether this is because their company has relocated them here for that long, or because that’s how long a visa lasts, or because that seems a ‘good’ number of years for which to try out something new and be away from their home-town. More often than not, though, these newcomers are in for a surprise when they find themselves here six or seven years later, and when their families consider Dubai ‘home.’ As a result of many cycles of this, and many families experiencing this, the permanency of Dubai has been established and it seems quite likely that those families currently escaping from the Arab Spring for a short while may end up in Dubai for a much longer time than they had originally anticipated, as many families before them.

Read it in its chirpy entirety.