Hyder Consulting, the award-winning engineering, environmental, planning and management consultancy, has given academics and business leaders in New York a unique insight into how Dubai has become “the fastest growing city in the world”, its ambitions and the policies that are driving it.
The company recently presented their work in Dubai at a lecture series entitled ‘Why Dubai’ organised by The Skyscraper Museum in New York, and held as part of an exhibition on the Burj Dubai.
The lecture was organised in conjunction with the museum’s Spring/Summer 2007 exhibition and the New York Academy of Sciences building.
It was moderated by Robert Ivy, Editor in Chief, Architectural Record and featured a panel of high calibre experts currently at work on a range of Dubai mega projects, including developers, architects, engineers, and construction industry executives.
Robert Booth, executive director, Emaar North America, John Braley, business development manager, Turner International, George Efstathiou, managing partner, SOM/Chicago, and Jordan Gruzen, partner, Gruzen Samton, LLP were among the speakers that constituted the panel.
Commenting on Hyder Consulting’s role in the lecture, John Mills, Burj Dubai project director, Hyder Consulting Middle East Ltd said, “We presented our work on one of the newest high-rise cities in the world to an audience who know and love one of the oldest – and they were impressed with what they saw.”
The lecture coincided with Hyder Consulting’s 45th anniversary in the Middle East and 150th internationally.
“It provided us with an excellent platform in the city of skyscrapers to share with the public what has been accomplished in the Middle East and in Dubai in a very short time, and addressed the controversial question of a perceived ‘Dubai real estate bubble’,” added Mills.
The participants debated many other issues during the lecture such as the government policies driving Dubai’s development, market forces, target markets for Dubai’s residential development, and whether the new freehold policy in Dubai has affected the real estate market.
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