Showing posts with label developers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label developers. Show all posts

Sunday 29 September 2013

We Is Own Your House

English: Atlantic mackerel Scomber scombrus. F...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
"Umm, excuse me? What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm grilling smoked mackerel using a portable barbecue in your living room. I would have thought that's obvious."
"I can see what you're actually doing, I suppose what I meant was why are you doing it in my property? Get out!"
"Well, it's not actually your property."
"Yes it is, I rent it from you."
"So we have the right to nip in and make sure things are shipshape. If you read today's Gulf News, you'll see that Dubai Municipality has confirmed that developers are regarded as the owners of the buildings. So I have the right to conduct inspections to see if you're running a private business from it, such as offering tuition."
"Okay, but that doesn't give you the right to grill smoked mackerel in my living room at half past eight in the morning!"
"Not explicitly, but we're establishing a precedent, see?"
"Get out now or I'll clobber you!"
"Now now, no need for that. I found the mackerel in your freezer by the way."
"So theft, now? What's that another precedent?"
"Look, let's be fair about this. Here's Dhs50 for the mackerel."
"Thanks, but you can still get out."
"Actually, I'm repossessing your house. Come on, lads! Get the women and kids out before we start moving the furniture!"
"What the hell gives you the right to do that?"
"You were conducting a business in your house. You're not allowed to do that. I thought that was clear."
"What business?"
"Selling mackerel. That fish was priced at Dhs35 and you sold it to me for Dhs50 which is a Dhs15 profit, so it's a business transaction. Sorry, matey."
"That's outrageous!"
"Well, I'll tell you what, I'll let it go with a Dhs2,000 fine. Because you've got an honest face."
"A Dhs2,000 fine for accepting Dhs50 from a mackerel grilling bastard who invaded my home?"
"Sound grasp of the facts, I see. Cash or cheque?"
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Tuesday 7 October 2008

Link




Here's a link to the official Death of Satwa website.

I have previously alluded to my deep fondness for Satwa, the last outpost of real 'organic' community living, where you can truly live out your dreams in a realistic and not unpleasant mix of cultures and communities. Since November last year, it's been clear that Satwa is going to become Squishwa.

Now we can see the whole awful thing in 3D renderings and gushy newspaper stories about the wonderful Dhs 350bn megaproject. The coverage is unsullied by a single critical word.

There's no doubt that the plans are amazing. The buildings are breathtaking. And I'm sure we all feel suitable astounded and dwarfed by it all. We're all pretty impressed down here, I can tell you.

The project will, according to Gulf News, 'redefine living in one of the most popular neighbourhoods of Dubai'.

GN doesn't go on to say why Satwa is one of the most popular neighbourhoods of Dubai: it's one of the few places where many people can afford to live. It's 'real' and has great places to wander around, eat and shop in real streets, not malls. It's close to the beach and sits bang between Deira and 'new Dubai'. It's got location, location, location without the mad rental price tags.

The new project will certainly be redefining things for all of us currently living and working in Satwa. It'll be redefining us the hell out of here to make way for some nice, planned, communities just like Jumeirah Beach Residence.

I am so very happy.

Sunday 10 February 2008

Threnody

So the Dubai Lands Department is slowly rolling up all the available real estate in Dubai’s delightfully eclectic and rather human Satwa area, making compulsory purchases that are causing howls of pain from landlords who believe (not unnaturally given the current trend in prices and the likely land use) they are entitled to a great deal more.

The tenants, a rather quieter voice, are being slowly ushered out – in cases this is happening before the rent cycle has finished and cheques are still being presented for rents on houses that people are being evicted from. Of course, in this instance, the tenant has no rights at all in terms of stopping these cheques: the landlords often ‘discount’ the post-dated cheques that tenants have to give for the coming year’s rental period, which means the landlords sell them to a bank in return for a percentage of their value in order to get cash up front. A cheque’s as good as cash in the UAE, so you can’t stop a cheque and if you fail to meet it, you’re immediately in the ‘wrong’ in the eyes of a legal system that likes to deal with simplicities to a degree of absoluteness that often descends into black farce. So if you default on a cheque, the beneficiary has the right to go to the police and have you arrested. The police won’t be interested in why you defaulted: the fact of the matter is that you did. So the tenants have to choice but to pay and then try to get their money back from the landlords. And, as anyone who’s had more than 10 minutes experience of living out here, that’s harder than getting your kid back from the Social Services.

I was down in Satwa Friday morning: I had to pop by the office. It’s wonderful to see the place waking up (which it does a great deal later on a Friday than on a weekday): the smells of cooking from the various restaurants and the garish shopfronts of the Dhs10 shops; the car accessory places already hurriedly slapping sheets of tinting on impatient customers’ Patrols and Altimas; the growing bustle in the supermarkets as an often bewildering array of people from all over the world wander along the sunny streets past the hanging displays of plastic toys, saris, second hand televisions and cooking pans. It’s a marvellous place, a real place: one of the few areas of Dubai that is truly organic.

And they’re going to replace it with yet another copy of Milton Keynes in the sun, another soulless slab of projects with a Prozac-induced strapline tacked onto its beige faux-adobe walls and smoked glass windows. Apparently even Safa Park’s going to go. And apparently Saudi super-investor HH Prince Walid Bin Talal’s the man behind the project. That’ll cheer up the landlords!

What the people doing this fail to realise is that Satwa is part of what makes Dubai interesting and unique: it’s like a rainforest – you might not think it’s terribly relevant, but this is where the oxygen and the material of life and biodiversity comes from. Pretty much every Filipina shop assistant in Dubai lives in Satwa – it’s cheap enough. If Karama is a little India, Satwa is a little Manila. You need places like Satwa for ordinary people to live, work and shop: for people to enjoy restaurants like Ravi’s, still the best Indian restaurant in Dubai, or Pars (Iranian), Al Mallah and Beirut (Lebanese). Satwa is the place where you’ll still find ‘poor’ stores selling cooking pots and charcoal; where cobblers will mend shoes for a few Dirhams and tailors knock up shirts for a few Dirhams more. This is the place where the plant souk rubs shoulders with the pet souk - a confluence that occasionally makes you think you ARE in a rainforest!

Cities need this: they need layers. What makes Cairo or Beirut great cities is that they are like great oak trees: they have the triumphs and scars of the ages written on them like the rings of a tree’s trunk: their walls and roofs reflecting the accretion of years of ordinary human beings living their lives, creating a diversity and tale of the passing years that makes the city so human and real. Even Amman, mostly settled since the 1920s, has layers of history from the past 2,000 years to the present day. So what if Satwa’s only a little piece of the past - it’s Dubai’s past. Which make it a little piece of something that is, in itself, small and rare enough to be treasured.

Dubai, so focused on its future that it has no time for the past, is slowly killing the things that originally made it a city worth visiting. The great Hatta track, like so many of the other tracks through the mountains that used to delight friends and family when they came visiting, is now black top. The beaches are so crammed with hotels that you can’t go camping or have a beach-side barbeque any more. The projects are tens of acres of soulless, squashed-together housing overshadowed by apartment blocks designed by architects from Toy Town. Thousands of hotel rooms and huge swathes of pleasure parks, stadia and artificial tourist attractions are going to stretch out into the desert from the beaches. And anything that isn’t regulated, new and air-conditioned is going to get steamrollered. So they’re going to tear down the Indian cantonment of Karama. And they’re going to rip the soul of of Satwa to give us an air-conditioned luxury shopping lifestyle megalopolis.

And not one solitary person who lives, works, shops or owns property in Satwa today wants this for its future.

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