Good news, bad news

Last week was very dramatic, which is a subtle reminder, in case it slipped our minds, that we're in Dubai.

For starters, Nakheel launched its "more than 1km" tall tower.

And Hollywood glam couple Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas came to town for it.

Cityscape organisers attempted to ban ITP Publishing from entering their exhibition.

And the little game that many of us play once a year called ‘The Cityscape Hunt for Parking Space' beat all records when I found myself in the same spot, after 2 hours and 500m later of driving around.

One would imagine that after seven years of doing the same show, something as basic as parking would have been sorted out. But at least that was the extent of the bad news.

The good news was: that we got into Cityscape thanks to some kind people working for the Cityscape organisers.

Nakheel's announcement about its tall tower project: The relief lay more in Nakheel's acknowledgement of building the tower than what was said about it because the announcement came at a time when it was needed to revive confidence in the market.

And funnily enough, the third piece of good news was the negative that I was fuming about earlier - the parking war.

The madness was a clear indication of the interest levels that people have had, and still have, in the property market here.

Despite the so-called credit crunch, new properties were still being launched and people were seemingly still queuing up to buy them.

Of course, there is the element of curiosity that some might say was the cause of the turnout, but curiosity also has its limits.

Many people that the CW team spoke to at the event said the market was largely protected against the global financial crises and if one looks at the GCC as a whole - it's clear there is a lot of oil money that has been made over the past few years which has to count for something.

And it looks like it's all counting for something now.

Rob Wagner is the editor of Construction Week.

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