Al-Ain: a mostly traditional city.

The summer hill station / oasis of Al-Ain sits beside mountains on the Oman border. The city has a strong urban fabric, with far too many traffic circles however (really now...not another one), very walkable and clean and very well maintained streets, with wonderful street side shopping along with many street trees, a real functioning oasis and just perfectly utilitarian open air markets. In many ways the required needs of a Gulf city are present here and is very instructive.

The question I ask then is where and why did the city building projects here in the Gulf try to emulate Pheonix or Dallas instead of the appropriate sort of urban fabric suited to the climate and culture? Yes, the private automobile was going to have to be accomodated, but who said the complete obliteration of 'street' was a good idea? We can be happy that at least Al Ain sits as an example to refer back to.

For example:

Tunis: old city above and new city below. Even the new city responded, in a french colonial way, at least to the climate if not the culture. Why were the french, in building new cities in a very warm climate able to remember a simple means of shading and creating active space by means of the arcades running along the streets...while currently new cities of the Gulf cannot.