Back in Dubai after three weeks in UK & Europe, then showing visiting friends around the city and some of the new developments. At last I can put some time into trying to post here more regularly.

We need more authors for the Dubai Metblog by the way, so if you’re interested let me know.

Back to the post – today the papers have run the story that the Arabian Canal is going ahead. It’s been talked about for a while but the latest rumours were that it was either put on hold or cancelled altogether. It seems they were what most rumours are, untrue.

Arabian Canal will be a 75 kilometre waterway will come in from the Arabian Gulf at Jebel Ali where the Dubai Waterfront development is taking shape, flow inland around the new World Central International Airport and back to the Gulf close to Dubai Marina and Palm Jumeirah.

Graphic from Gulf News

It will be up to 150 metres wide and 6 metres deep, able to take boats up to 40 metres in length, take around three years to complete and cost US$11 billion. Work is due to start at the end of this year.

It will flow through what is basically barren desert and when it’s done it will obviously add a huge amount of extra waterfront land for Dubai’s development.

Also announced was the first of the developments which will eventually, I’m sure, run all around the canal. This is a vast US$50 billion waterfront development covering 20,000 hectares and stretching 33 kilometres along the inland section of the canal. The developer says it will include residential areas, business centres and marinas. Work will probably begin at the end of 2008 and take fifteen years to complete.

Showing my friends around I had a look at just a small part of the development that’s going on and even that was mind-boggling. The size and scale of the rest of the current development plus this new project are almost beyond belief!