Remote sensing and interdisciplinary approach for studying Dubai’s urban context and development

Abstract

Outlining the different phases and features of the urban and socio-economic development of Dubai, this work is aimed at highlighting the potential of remote sensing and the interdisciplinary approach for the study of cities characterised by overwhelming growth processes. In this way Dubai represents an ideal laboratory since the processes that have been triggered in the last decades have radically modified the previous balances and layouts. Thus the image of a mirage city has been gradually diffused, a city where ambitious objectives can be achieved, targets reached that are difficult to pursue elsewhere, frenetic development processes realised, in a nevertheless increasingly delicate territorial-environmental fabric onto which such phenomena are grafted. The analysis of various remote sensed images, gathered over different periods of times, highlights a number of important aspects from the geological point of view, of the physical geography, the urban development and the direct growth in all directions, with a series of artificial islands and much publicised anthropic works.