There is no doubt that this year’s Cityscape Dubai was big. For the first time in its seven-year history the event was open for four days and drew a record-breaking crowd of 70,000 people from over 150 countries. Despite the numbers, however, there was a palpable sense that many visitors were there to see the sights rather than to buy. Perhaps the presence of the nascent Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) and its ban on selling in the venue kept the frenzy of previous years at bay. On offer There were fewer launches than expected and most of them consisted of luxury residential developments. It would have been refreshing to see launches in other categories, yet many developers were able to wow the crowds with their unique master-planned communities across the MENA from Morocco to Egypt and from Syria to Iraq. The only real investment announcement of the show came
