An ode to Dubai's Golden Falcon

I was 14 years old when I started a petition to save the Golden Falcon from its imminent retirement, unable to comprehend how the city could part with this noble beast perched majestically in the centre of Bur Dubai’s most famous roundabout.

Needless to say, neither my petition, nor my romantic musings, found any takers in a city that was at the cusp of a rapid economic boom in the mid-nineties.

Four years later, with a driving license in hand and stuck in high noon chaos that best describes the gridlock at Deira’s Fish Roundabout even today, the penny finally dropped. What I was terming as the demise of Dubai’s many landmarks ­(remember the almost magical Flame Roundabout that once spewed a ball of fire) was actually the emirate’s way of redeveloping its roads network to ensure safety and better commuting practices in its ever-expanding arteries.

As with any major city undergoing a birthing process, the infrastructure follows suit, mimicking its growth pattern with trials and tribulations that make the journey all the more exciting.

Back in the early eighties when the Dubai World Trade Centre marked the city limit of the emirate, envisioning a bustling metropolis rising through the barren wasteland almost seemed like an impossible dream. All that was visible in the yawning abyss was a lone strip of a dusty path streaking through the desert sands, a stretch that we now know as Sheikh Zayed Road.

Planning a trip to Abu Dhabi was an adventure on its own. A journey that takes a mere 45 minutes today was a two-hour trek navigating endless roundabouts, dodging errant camels and pulling over at a checkpoint to pay 25 fils, which would guarantee a stamp in the passport and allow access into the capital.

How times have changed.

As Dubai’s tentacles spread southwards, moving faster than the shamals that blew in the hot desert winds, its tenacity to defy all odds drew in admirers from far and wide. The population boom of the late nineties demanded a mapped out city grid that catered to communities springing up beyond the initial city limit, while restructuring the original blueprint to accommodate the weight of the bustling traffic that would one day reach notoriety.

The first victims of this collateral damage were landmarks such as Falcon, Flame and Defence roundabouts, which had been designed aping practices implemented in the seventies, when the UAE was still under administrative control of the British.

With each passing decade, the rural landscape was slowly chipped away to facilitate urban planning, bringing with it new practices that are evolving even today. The vision to better ourselves streamlined this process even further, leading us ultimately to Dubai Metro’s historical launch on September 9, 2009, followed by the grand opening of the world's tallest tower, Burj Khalifa in January.

Today, Dubai enters a new phase in its growth cycle that will see the city shift gears in its urban development plan with the ultimate goal being a progressive tomorrow, without losing sight of its heritage. Just like every other milestone that has found a place in Dubai’s history books, this dream too is within our reach.

Yet while I look into distant horizon, admiring the new landscape of a city that sees pillars of glass and steel reaching for the skies, I will take a moment to remember that Golden Falcon that took flight before its time to make way for a better tomorrow.

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