Reading 16

“While the precise percentage of Emiratis in Dubai is a matter of dispute—the government does not publish reliable demographic data—it now rivals the meagre percentages of indigenous North Americans and aboriginal Australians. Academic estimates of the percentage of Emiratis in Dubai range from 5 percent to as low as 3 percent. While the city contains an estimated 150,000 expatriate Arabs, often educated professionals from impoverished countries like Morocco or Egypt, Sheikh Mohammed’s full-on embrace of globalization has rendered Dubai demographically less Arab than Dearborn, Michigan, or Marseilles, France, let alone other Middle Eastern cities. South Asians are by far the majority of Dubai’s population, likely numbering over a million and performing a full range of jobs from doctors and lawyers to construction workers and hotel clerks. Britons, numbering approximately one hundred thousand, make up the largest contingent of expatriate Westerners. Dubai is so devoid of natives that, in 2007, the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing sponsored a series of ‘Talk to a Local’ booths in Dubai shopping malls so tourists could meet a real-life Emirati. Today, at the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding, visitors can meet a local—but only one day a week. On other days, guests are treated to traditional Arabian coffee and fresh dates served by an Indian.”

- Daniel Brook, A History of Future Cities (2013)