The Burj’s At The Top five years on

Burj Khalifa boasts the best views in the world, but what kind of city is emerging below?

The view from At The Top – Burj Khalifa on the 148th floor of the skyscraper. Jeffrey E Biteng / The National

What a difference a day made. Last Sunday, the world’s tallest tower celebrated its fifth birthday with displays of traditional Emirati yola dancing, a high-­altitude outside broadcast by Virgin Radio Dubai, face painting, balloon bending and free entry to the 456-metre-high viewing platform that now occupies part of the Burj Khalifa’s 125th floor.

For those lucky enough to share the tower’s birthday, there was also a 50 per cent discount on the price of admission to the highest of its three observation decks: At The Top Burj Khalifa SKY, the vertiginously monikered attraction that styles itself as “Dubai’s most iconic destination”.

It isn’t just the Dh500 (US$136) entry fee, the “guest ambassadors”, dedicated lift or the luxurious lounges that lend excursions to the “world’s highest outdoor observation deck” a rarefied air.

Not only can temperatures above the deck’s record-­breaking 555.7 metres be as much 10 degrees cooler than they are at ground level but excursions to the 148th floor are limited to just 30 minutes and during their brief stay visitors are treated to “a pioneering concept in interactive experiences with a life-size screen that envelops you as you explore different corners of the emirate”.

The augmented views continue on the 125th floor with Dubai – A Falcon’s Eye View, a floor mounted screen that takes visitors on a journey above Dubai landmarks such as the Al Fahidi District and Dubai Marina while a floor down, on the Burj’s original viewing deck, digital telescopes not only provide up-close views of the present, but also use old photographs and renderings to offer glimpses of Dubai’s future and its not-so-distant past.

Despite all of these opportunities to embrace the vision that At The Top Burj Khalifa so carefully constructs, it’s the unmediated views from the tower that captivate the crowds.

It’s said that on a clear day it’s possible to see Iran from here but most eyes focus closer to home and the majority are fixed firmly on the ground zero of consumption that surrounds the base of the Burj.

From this height, it’s difficult to distinguish individuals, and cars that career alarmingly at ground level appear to glide sedately like the miniature props on some elaborate architectural model.

The impression of unpopulated unreality is accentuated by the grey, Lego-like roof of The Dubai Mall, the eye-popping aquamarine finish of The Dubai Fountain and the saccharine architecture of the Souk Al Bahar.

As any visitor to property exhibitions such as MIPIM or Cityscape can attest, it’s the kind of top-down perspective preferred by developers and real-estate agents the world over, one that creates a partial and unreal image of the city that’s divorced from the ground-level realities of the vast majority of its inhabitants.

As the UAE-based architect and academic Yasser Elsheshtawy explained in his 2014 An Urbanist's Guide to Dubai, such views only serve to reinforce the cliché of Dubai as a city of spectacle "that is exclusive, catering only to the rich and privileged".

As Elsheshtawy has said elsewhere, this image is a myth that is “veneer thin” and he points instead to the vibrant, ­bottom-up urbanism of neighbourhoods such as Baniyas Square, Deira and Bur Dubai as a corrective to the popular clichés that surround the city.

But as developments such The World Islands, the Palm Jumeirah and the Palm Jebel Ali prove, the danger lies in Dubai’s ability to turn myths, no matter how clichéd, into a dislocated reality.

“It seems to me that a city is in the process of being created without facilitating a kind of ­bottom-up urbanism that allows for the emergence of spontaneous activities and encounters,” Elsheshtawy says. “These are the key ingredients for a true urbanity some of which still exists but seems to be on the way out.”

The answer, the architect argues, lies in a very different “development paradigm”, “that does not rely exclusively on ­mega-projects” and “a realisation that a city is more than simply a canvas for real estate investment may lead to an urban environment that is truly representative of a new kind of urbanism.”

Elsheshtawy’s call to arms on behalf of the everyday, the ordinary and the small takes its inspiration from many sources, such as the writing of the Danish urban designer Jan Gehl and the research of the American urbanist and people-watcher William H Whyte, but it’s in the ideas of the French philosopher Michel de Certeau that it finds a certain apotheosis.

"The ordinary practitioners of the city live 'down below', below the threshold at which visibility begins," de Certeau wrote in The Practice of Everyday Life, a book written 30 years before the completion of the world's tallest tower. Old they may be, but as a description of the view from the Burj Khalifa de Certeau's words have a resonance that is almost uncanny.