Dubai: A Return To Normalcy

"Return to normalcy," the slogan with which Warren Harding won the US presidential election after World War I, perhaps best describes Dubai today. Property and rental prices are reasonable now (you can find a four bedroom villa centrally located for €2000 a month), the taxis are plentiful, and the traffic jams are largely gone. Gone too is the hype. Major infrastructural works are in the final stages of completion: five bridges now cross the Creek, with the sixth and seventh set to be completed in 2012; the Dubai metro, probably the cleanest in the world, went into operation last year, with the last few stations still to be completed; Internet access used to be substandard, but now, a 40 Mbps fibre optics connection costs as much as an average speed ADSL connection cost last year. Dubai is now a more pleasant, cosmopolitan city then ever before.