Dubai’s largest development company, Nakheel, invited UDG to participate in a top-level planning charrette. A total of ten architects, planners, urbanists and amenity programmers gathered with Nakheel’s executives to envision Dubai’s future. The group also discussed Nakheel’s future projects.

The work sessions addressed the issues related to Dubai’s explosive growth and were designed to begin a dialogue concerning the challenge of creating a truly world-class city. Specifically, the work sessions focused on:

• Developing unifying elements and top-drawer planning principles to a collection of “projects” to transform the experience of Dubai and create the beginning of a waterfront-wide grand plan.

• Envisioning additional methods/projects/themes/issues that could make the plan come to life in a compelling and focused way.

• Identifying key implementation enablers and challenges.

The work sessions focused on three distinct elements: a new large canal project, new themed island projects and new communities inland on, or around, the new canal.