Introduction
The 1973 oil boom inspired rapid economic growth in the United Arab Emirates, which put the affiliate cities on the map of the world. Cities such as Dubai began to flourish and attract migrants from various parts of the world. With the huge economic potential and numerous opportunities, people from across the globe moved to Dubai to explore and make life better. From a population of less than 183000 people In 1975, the population would multiply to a million people, with the population in 2015 attaining a double million figure of 2 million, with a huge chunk of a composition comprising of foreigners. The influx of foreigners motivated by economic opportunities created urbanization. Huge economic projects such as the Emirates Airlines and several ports began to emerge. The new projects further inspired and facilitated the migration of the people to the tiny underpopulated island. Years later, Dubai would become an economic giant and one of the top destinations for tourists and migrants in search of opportunities. While the rapid economic growth story of Dubai is inspiring and worth celebrating, it has come at the huge cost of environmental, social, and health crises.
The celebrated urbanization motivated by economic growth has been characterized by serious challenges. The city is now forced to deal with urbanization-related problems such as environmental pollution, economic exploitation, poverty, high crime rates, and industrial problems. Despite boasting of huge economic potential with numerous opportunities that increasingly attract foreign labor, imported labor is constantly proving as one of the major contributors to urbanization and associated problems. With major global centers adopting and shifting to smart city technology to solve urbanization problems, there is a need for Dubai City to develop favorable strategies to integrate up-to-date intelligent and smart technology with urban planning and become a smart city.
Context and Ideas
Like other sister cities making up the UAE, Dubai has experienced rapid economic growth which tracks back to the last 3o years since the emergence of huge oil deposits. The City’s economy is depended on oil which has proved lucrative and a huge economic driver. Formerly, a small island with a low population, the city has experienced rapid growth to become one of the richest cities in the world with numerous opportunities. The appearance on the global map as an opportunity-rich destination has attracted a huge foreign population that visits the country to compete for the numerous available opportunities, At the same time, the less indigenous population is moving to the urban centers to explore the opportunities. The combined foreign and local population migrating to the urban centers for opportunities has made Dubai one of the most urbanized cities with a larger number of people residing in the urban centers. While this has facilitated rapid economic growth and put Dubai on the global map, the ever-rising urbanization is constantly becoming a major concern for policymakers, government officials, and environmentalists who consider it a threat.
The influx of foreign labor motivated employers to establish labor camps for individuals to solve the problem of accommodation. While this was a noble gesture, the ever-expanding and increasing number of labor camps encouraged urbanization. The constantly increasing labor migrants are filling the labor camps making the employers often increase and expand labor camps. The tiny island with a mere population of 183000 people in 1975 has become one of the most populated cities with a population of 2 million. Even though this is a positive fete, the increased population comprising majorly of foreigners is responsible for the urbanization. The witnessed urbanization has been characterized by social, economic, government, and environmental problems which require rapid intervention. With the global community looking up to technology to provide solutions to most problems, Dubai City manages the urbanization challenges by the following strategies;
Existing Strategies in Dubai
Dubai is developing various strategies for integrating smart technology into its policy as a measure of dealing with the urbanization challenges that have been on the rise. In a bid to become a smart city, Dubai has invested in taking advantage of advanced technology to come up with smart solutions to its various problems associated with urbanization growth. Copying from world smart cities such as Hong Kong, London, Singapore, and New York among others, Dubai is looking up to technology to improve services and the quality of life for its ever-increasing residents. The strategies include;
Smart Parking System
With the ever-increasing number of foreign laborers, the city of Dubai will continue to experience a high influx of foreign population. The high population which is comprised mainly of foreign and local laborers is responsible for the high traffic jams. The use of smart parking systems will be useful in monitoring street parking and controlling parking meter rates which will improve the transport system. Using smart technology in the transport system will help the city to solve the transport system that has been rampant (Lee et al, 2022). Since Dubai remains a top destination for most people due to the numerous available economic opportunities, the city will continue to expand and extend to the peripheral areas. Using the suburbanization theory which believes in the peripheral growth of a city as a reference, the constant influx of foreign labor will motivate a chunk of the population to move to the periphery which will in turn attract economic activities and eventually urbanization (Hague et al, 2022). This means that transport system challenges such as traffic jams will begin to develop in the newly developed urban centers. A smart parking system is thus a necessity that should be integrated into the urbanization policy.
Smart Street Lighting System
As in other cities, urbanization has triggered a high crime rate in Dubai. The high migration of people in search of economic opportunities has increased the crime rate in Dubai since some of the migrants have not been absorbed by the employers making them resort to crimes such as burglary to survive. In addition, the influx of foreign labor has created a labor surplus, causing low wages. As a result of high economic living, some of the lowly-paid laborers can barely sustain their life and thus resort to theft for survival (Przeybilovicz et al, 2022). Smart street light systems will therefore enhance surveillance and security in the city, thereby reducing the crime rate. The smart street lighting systems facilitate remote control of street lights and provide centralized online applications to monitor the street. This will enhance the work of the security agencies and improve the safety of the people (Heidari et al, 2022). With the ability to control the street lights remotely and provide lighting through online applications, urbanization-related crime will be immensely reduced because the security agents will be in a sole position to identify criminals responsible for committing theft and burglary. This will help to improve the quality of life in the city through safety.
Smart Retail Shopping
Dubai is a business hub with thriving retail businesses. The populated urban system in the city is likely to delay service in the retail business because the retailers may be overwhelmed by the high number of individuals demanding their services (Manjon et al, 2022). Retailers such as shopping carts may experience a serious problem servicing the high number of customers at a go (Zhu, 2022). Smart retail shopping is a smart technological system that provides an easy form of payment by allowing an automatic deduction from the customers’ bank account or by smart cards or affiliated cellphone apps (Javed et al, 2022). This cab eases service provision by the retail shops and efficiency in business.
Smart Utility Services
To control the usage and enhance proper consumption of public amenities such as water and electricity, Dubai adopted a smart utility service system to help regulate the use of the resources. The new technological approach is helping the government of the city to reduce and mitigate the misuse of resources (Lee et al, 2022). Besides improving the quality of life, the strategy will help to cut the cost and remove unnecessary burdens from the government.
Methodology
Since the aim of the report is to develop strategies to integrate and adopt up-to-date intelligent and smart technologies in urban planning policies in the UAE, digging into the problems of urbanization and proving how the selected strategies can solve the identified problems and using Dubai City as an example, a case study is an appropriate methodology to apply. The report demands a deeper analysis of the urbanization-related problems and an understanding of how the selected strategies can solve the problems. They will particularize the urbanization challenges in Dubai, analyze their impacts on the quality of life, and establish how the strategies can help to solve them and improve the quality of life. In addition, the research will look at the available smart technologies and analyze how they have been used and performed in other cities to solve similar or related problems. It will focus on smart cities such as New York, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore. Paris and Beijing among other smart cities, the report will evaluate the performance of each smart technology strategy and how they performed in the individual cities.
To obtain more information about urbanization and related problems in Dubai and the smart technological strategies that have been used in the past to salvage the challenges, two separate brief interviews were organized and done with one of the Dubai government officials and a laborer and resident of the city to give a comprehensive explanation. Being a public subject, it was appropriate to engage a public official to get a clear and unbiased explanation of the problem and hear the government’s plans about the same. Similarly, it was appropriate to have an interview with a laborer resident of Dubai to give his experience living in the city and how urbanization has impacted his life. The research questions were developed in a manner that would attract a broad response from government officials. The research questions would help in having detailed information concerning urbanization challenges in Dubai. Since the interview was unstructured, three open questions were put down;
- What are the major problems of urbanization in Dubai?
- Does the government plan to integrate smart technology into urbanization policies?
- What are some of the government strategies to integrate up-to-date intelligence and technology in urban planning policy?
In the second interview with the laborer resident of Dubai, two unstructured open questions were drafted for the participant. The questions were set in a way that allowed the respondent to give a precise and honest personal experience and his opinion of the problem. Since urbanization has both personal and general effects on an individual, the interview helped get the opinion and individual account of experiences from the impacts of urbanization on individuals and the city as a whole. The research questions included;
- What are the individual experiences of urbanization?
- What are your personal views on smart technology?
- What are the individual expectations from the government towards the urbanization challenges?
To obtain more information about urbanization in Dubai and the related problems and some of the best relevant strategies to integrate smart intelligence and technology in urbanization policies, a content analysis was carried out in different academic journals that had done similar research on the same. In addition, the report used news reports from international and local UAE media firms such as Aljazeera and the Emirates media house. Think-tank analyses done by individual researchers also provided some information about the problem. Reports from NGOs especially those dealing in environmental conservation and human rights were engaged. Examples of the NGO reports were the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the UNHCR.
Labor Exploitation
From the interview done with the laborer resident of Dubai, labor exploitation in terms of low wages and harsh working conditions featured consistently in the response. The respondent explained that the influx of foreign labor has led to surplus labor in the city and as a result, various employees are taking advantage of the situation to exploit laborers through peanut wages (Latief et al, 2022). Unlike in the past when working in Dubai was lucrative because of sustainable salaries, the situation has since deteriorated in recent years with employers now paying barely sustainable and very low wages (Tomaira, 2022). Besides the low wages, the respondent complains of harsh working conditions and long duration of work (Majumdar et al, 2022). As opposed to the UN standard of 8 working hours a day, Dubai employers are subjecting their workers to longer working hours, in some cases exceeding 12 working hours (Lele, 2022). The labor camps established for workers are another concern of the respondent who claims the living conditions in the labor camps are pathetic and dehumanizing.
High Crime Rate
Crime is one of the challenges that are regularly mentioned by government respondents associated with the growing urbanization. The crime rate has significantly increased in recent years when the city of Dubai got urbanized, with criminal activities such as theft taking an upward trajectory (Rao et al, 2022). This can be attributed to the high cost of living in the city which is beyond the ability of many, especially immigrants who are paid low wages in their workers. As a result, many individuals resort to criminal activities including theft and burglary for survival.
The influx of immigrants has created different economic classes with the foreign laborers occupying the lowest economic level. The foreign laborers who were motivated by the idea of a better life in the city are now turning to criminal activities to facilitate their survival on the island after experiencing the reality of low unsustainable wages (Adel, 2022). With the desire to survive in the expensive city and provide for their families in their homelands, crime remains their only option, something which has caused the crime rate to experience a surge (Almulhim et al, 2022). The island city has since climbed the ladder of top cities with the highest crime rates (Amhed et al, 2022). Despite being one of the top tourist destinations in the Middle East, the beautiful island city is being eaten up by criminals.
Discussion of the Findings
In addition to the high crime rate and labor expectation mentioned by the two respondents from the interview, other challenges featured in various sources such as academic journals, news reports, and NGO reports among other sources of information that were engaged in the research. According to the sources, the island is urbanization at the cost of environmental, social, economic, and health challenges (Ragheb, 2022). Despite the flourishing economy and high urbanization growth, the city is haunted by some problems which require immediate intervention (Ibrahim et al, 2022). In this era of technology where the global community is shifting towards artificial intelligence, Dubai must emulate smart cities such as London, New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong among other cities and integrate smart technology in its urbanization policies to solve the challenges (Kamal and Abu-Hijleh, 2022). Some of the strategies that have proved successful in the various smart cities can help the city overcome urbanization challenges such as smart street lighting systems and smart parking systems among others with each solving a specific problem.
Congestion Problem and Congestion Pricing Technology
Various sources from the research point to traffic congestion as a major problem in the Island city of Dubai. Due to the increased urbanization of the city which has been characterized by an influx of immigrants looking for jobs and tourism, Dubai has become one of the most populated cities with a population of more than 2 million people. The surge in population has created a problem in the transport system through traffic congestion (Khan et al, 2022). The movement of people from and to various workstations coupled with the movement of tourists has increased traffic congestion in the city (Portes and Anthony, 2022). To reduce traffic congestion, the city should adopt and integrate congestion pricing technology in its urbanization policy. The technology will reduce road use surcharges, thereby solving the problem of traffic congestion.
Crime Rate and Smart Street Lighting Technology Supplemented by Predictive Policing
According to the government officials interviewed, the crime rate has taken an upward trajectory with the growth of urbanization. The city which was peaceful in the past has gradually turned into a crime den, with numerous cases of theft and burglary (Embarak, 2022). While linking the high crime rate to low wages and high cost of living, the government official reiterated that the increased criminal activities may affect tourism which has recorded a high growth in recent years (Mahmood et al, 2022). Smart Street lighting systems technology will deal with the crime problem by enhancing street surveillance and monitoring through remote-controlled street lights and a centralized online application system of lighting regulation (Al-Furman et al, 2022). With this technology, security agencies will have an easier time surveying and monitoring activities in the various corners of the city and identifying potential security threats.
Environmental Pollution and Just-in-time Waste Collection
Like other urbanized cities, Dubai has experienced an increase in environmental pollution through poor waste dumping. The migration and settlement of people at the industrial centers have caused overcrowding in the urban centers, making waste management difficult (Chackravati et al, 2022). In addition, the increase and expansion of labor camps which is motivated by the influx of foreign labor has contributed to overcrowding in the labor camps, inspiring poor waste dumping (Hafiz and Zhodi, 2022). Besides dumped waste, environmental pollution is caused by industrial emissions, especially from the oil firms. Being an oil economy, Dubai comprises of several firms dealing in oil production. While this has contributed positively to the economic growth of the city, the growth has been achieved at the cost of environmental degradation. The various oil-producing firms emit dangerous gases and other waste products which are a threat to the environment.
The just-in-time waste collection a smart technology will solve environmental problems by reducing waste in the city. The strategy helps to prevent garbage accumulation by enhancing and facilitating immediate collection (Alhazmi, 2022). Using solar-powered rubbish containers with fill-level sensors and compactors that have higher garbage-carrying capacities, the technology will help to detect excess garbage volume and send a signal (Khalaf, 20220. This technological plan has proved successful in Singapore where waste collection is effectively managed.
Theory
Suburbanization Theory
Citing the argument from the suburbanization theory, Dubai will continue to expand and urbanize beyond the present urbanized centers. With the continued in-flow of foreign migrants from Africa and Asia, urbanization will extend to its periphery. If this is to happen, the urbanization challenges such as crime, congestion, insecurity, environmental pollution, and overcrowding among others which are witnessed presently will extend to the new urbanized peripherals. The aforementioned smart technological strategies will therefore be needed to deal with the challenges.
Conclusion
Dubai as one of the UAE cities is enjoying urbanization at the high cost of environmental, social, health, and economic challenges which has recently characterized the city. Despite experiencing high urbanization growth which has facilitated economic growth and elevated the city to the global map, the country is facing intertwined challenges that have been contributed by the movement of the people to centralized places. Cases of insecurity are on the rise with the surge in the crime rate. The foreign immigrants and local population who have been overwhelmed by the high cost of living after having been subjected to labor exploitation through low wages are resorting to criminal activities including burglary to survive. In addition to insecurity and high crime rates, the city is facing the challenge of environmental pollution attributed to waste dumping and insufficient garbage collection.
In the same way Dubai has experienced exponential growth marching globally reputable cities in economy and population, the government should move with speed to adopt smart technological strategies to combat the urbanization challenges. Smart Cities such as Hong Kong, London, New York, and Singapore among others have proved that technology can effectively help to solve urbanization challenges. By integrating smart technological strategies such as smart street lighting systems, congestion pricing, smart utility services, and smart parking in its urbanization planning, the city can overcome the challenges and become a smart city.
Recommendations
Looking at the Smart Cities such as London, Hong Kong, and Singapore among other major cities that have successfully adopted and integrated smart technology in their urbanization policies, one thing stands out the aforementioned cities first created supporting systems and developed favorable factors for the journey. Using various urbanization theories such as suburbanization, the governments of the cities were able to predict the direction and rate of growth of the cities before developing a particular policy. Similarly, the Dubai government can use the theory of suburbanization and other theories to predict the future urbanization growth rate and the potential specific areas that will get urbanized, and formulate better policies.
While the journey of becoming a Smart City is a gradual process that may take some time, the government of Dubai must put all the favorable conditions that will facilitate the development. Smart City technological systems can only work where and when the responsible players and factors are favorable. With the help of suburbanization theory, the government of Dubai can predict the next phases of urbanization growth and prepare. Some of the recommendations that should be considered by the government to make the Smart City into reality include;
Developing Effective Connectivity
Smart City is fully dependent on wireless technology such as WIFI service. The government should therefore improve connectivity and make it reliable for the technological systems to operate. Dubai should consider 4G and 5G and make them strong for efficient data transmission through their systems.
Improving Communication Infrastructure
For the Smart City dream to become a reality, Dubai must improve its communication infrastructure by developing high-capacity telecommunications towers and data centers that can facilitate computing services. Without better communication infrastructures, the Smart City will remain a far-fetched dream, and thus the challenges associated with urbanization will continue to haunt the beautiful island city. Most importantly, the government should train, prepare, and rally the residents of the city towards smart technology. The new technology will need the support of the residents to make it functional and effective. For instance, the just-in-time waste collection technology and smart utility services system will need the cooperation of the residents for effectiveness.
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