Five years ago it was the building frenzy and Dubai, at least on paper, looked bigger and dinosaur-crazier each month. Then an unprecedented phase of correction meant the survival only of the fittest projects and the leanest developers. Today, the emirate and the entire federation are in a new growth mode that can be likened to a natural evolution, master-planned. On the ground this translates into a cautious buzz from visible construction activity. This entails airports and hotels and further solidification of the United Arab Emirates’ hospitality and tourism infrastructures, but in Dubai in particular it means that roads are being completed and multi-unit residential projects are bit by bit transformed into the communities they promised to be. Put in numbers, real estate transactions executed in the UAE over the 12 months ended September 17 totalled around 15,500 with median prices of about $280,000 per transaction, according to Dubai-based emerging
