The urban development in Dubai : A descriptive analysis

Abstract:   The aim of this paper is to analyse the urban development in Dubai by means of the fourquadrant model, presented by DiPasquale and Wheaton, which represents the market for real estate use and assets. The focus is on factors such as economic growth, access to oil, population growth and the incentive of the government to promote developments in Dubai, to study how they affect the real estate market. It is observed how all these factors contribute to the expansion of the construction sector and thereby the stock of space. However, because Dubai's economy is independent of the oil sector, access to oil is solely assumed to contribute to a higher amount of disposable capital and therefore does not have any upward pressure on the rent and the price level as the remaining factors.