What's wrong with Dubai?

From the NYT, an Interesting analysis.: The Ascent, and Fall, of Dubai

Besides (or maybe beyond) excess capacity, Dubai suffers from a major design flaw: It's a brilliant copy of the very worst model of urban planning: USA 1975.

Even in the 5-6 months of moderate weather you cannot walk around the new parts of Dubai. The distances are too great for comfortable walking. The city is built around the car. All that Arab culture learned in a thousand years about adapting cities to great heat -- high-ceilinged buildings along narrow streets which provide shade and short distances to walk outside — have been forgotten or ignored. Confoundingly, with all of Europe and Asia to learn from, the city's design ignores the goals of the sophisticated tourist — to be able to walk around outside — in favor of antiquated down-market Las Vegas.

via Marginal Revolution: Dubai fact of the day (see my further comments there)

Btw, just in case my criticism is interpreted as disparagement — it's not. I liked Dubai and had a great time there in my very brief stay last year. It's just that I would have liked it better and would be more intent on returning if it were a walkable city. Plus I think that if it were a walkable comfortable (hey! that's what this blog is about: comfort) city it would have increased staying-power and depth as a tourist destination. 

UPDATE: I should also qualify my snarky remark about Las Vegas. In fact even its visitors like to walk. "The Strip " is busy with walkers; it's almost a "scene." But you get the big drift, basically Las Vegas and every other place in the USA newly built in the last 40-50 years is built around cars so using Las Vegas as an example of auto-oriwnted urbanism is still very fair. I imagine it's just the huge mass of tourists which overcome the vast spaces of Las Vegas, make it feel busy and populated, and encourage people to walk. Being allowed to drink (alcohol) outside as you stroll the Strip  (yes it is legal) probably encourages it. too. Taking a walk along the Vegas Strip.

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Dubai weather from Octoberish to Aprilish (kinda like Palm Springs?) is pretty nice. Warm but not at all unpleasant. Very walkable if the place is designed for walking. Few people are going to go to Dubai for vacations in the other months no matter how much air conditioning you provide. So the "design month" when you can make the big bucks off tourists should be the cooler time i.e. the walkable time. But the way they have it set up in Dubai, walking is not encouraged even when it is quite feasible.