What a new mini-city between Abu Dhabi and Dubai might look like

A road sign in the UAE. Discussion about urban development has recently focused on the idea of the 20-minute city. Getty images

The plan, announced last month, to build a new mini-city called Mamoura located between Abu Dhabi and Dubai raised the question for a few historically minded people of what landline number prefix such a place might be assigned. Under the current system, which dates back more than 50 years, Abu Dhabi uses the 02 prefix for landlines, Al Ain has 03, for Dubai it is 04 and 05 is for mobile numbers. Three emirates further north use 06, and so on.

The missing number prior to this sequence, 01, was originally reserved for the planned construction of the city of Karama, a development between Dubai and Abu Dhabi envisaged in the early 1970s period of nation-building. But the Karama project never moved beyond the drawing board and 01 has been vacant ever since, putting the new, not-quite-midpoint city potentially in the frame for the designation.

Mamoura was described as a $15 billion "full-scale small city" in the making by Mira Developments, who say the plan is to deliver more than 16,000 apartments and villas, as well as hotels, a mall, hospital, museums, schools and universities to a site that could almost be seen as a bridge between the two emirates. The developer told The National it was “the best location” in the whole of the UAE.

The 01 prefix question is best answered by saying "it doesn’t matter", because landlines are not the first thing that spring to mind when considering a city of the future and, more prosaically, by saying probably not. Given the geography, Mamoura (or inhabited land) is most likely to be assigned 02 as location maps place it well within Abu Dhabi emirate’s borders.

But the deeper point about what the idea of a city situated between Abu Dhabi and Dubai used to mean, and what it might signify now, is moot. In particular, because one day in the future there will be a near unbroken settlement along the length of the Abu Dhabi-Dubai road, a situation unimaginable in the past.

These days commuters move quickly between the two emirates on a multi-lane highway with plenty passing them by on the sides of the roads, but it wasn’t always so. The foundation years of the country were characterised by the transformation of that route from sand track to paved road. It wasn’t until the end of the 1980s that the single tarmac carriageway that bore transport between Abu Dhabi and Dubai was widened to two lanes. Formal rest stops, barriers and further carriageway improvements were to follow, making it into the vital arterial road we know today.

Even 15 years ago, drivers may have mentally mapped the route by Shahama, outside Abu Dhabi, as the point beyond which sand, scrub and trees largely take over, but those old assumptions and, perhaps, false memories no longer hold.

Similarly, Dubai seems to stretch further south with every passing year. Where once Last Exit food truck park, soon to be 10 years old, felt like a particularly clever piece of nominative determinism signalling a far-flung outpost of the city, now it might be said to be a little more wistful in its naming convention and modern reality.

Population growth in the UAE demands these solutions

A lot of discussion about urban development has recently focused on the idea of the 20-minute city, where the majority of a resident’s daily needs – these might be offices, shops and amenities – are within easy reach and without the need for a car. Certainly, the concept supporting Mamoura as a full-scale small city sits within that framework. So too, does the "smart and sustainable city" plan in nearby Ghantoot, close to the border between the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and the works to transform the Expo 2020 site into a residential community.

Population growth in the UAE demands these solutions. Statistics Centre Abu Dhabi reported earlier this year that the emirate’s population is now more than four million and that the workforce had grown by 9 per cent in the past year. Dubai’s population has doubled in the past decade and a half and is now more than four million, too. Both numbers, as well as a strong economic outlook for the UAE, suggest a complex puzzle needs to be solved, with more and more people wanting to move to the country and seeing their long-term future within its borders. That requires more supply of housing, amenities and infrastructure.

A generation ago, the answer to the urgency of population growth might have been to conceptualise in terms of mega-projects - the construction equivalent of the Olympic "faster, higher, stronger" clarion call. Now, it may be in the smaller "full-scale" solutions or 20-minute cities.

Another generation back from that, a midway development between the two large emirates may have been the bridge to our collective future, now it is a series of smaller connected but discrete communities built with the possibility of AI powering solutions to create opportunities, cut red tape and deliver smarter living. Perhaps that future will also dial in some new telephone number prefixes to whatever the next-generation equivalent of a landline may be.

The natural agility of the UAE, combined with the forward-looking nature of policy-making means solutions are always within touching distance and sometimes provides the most intriguing glimpse of the future.

This week, for instance, the joint declaration issued by President Sheikh Mohamed and Lee Jae Myung, South Korean President, during the latter’s state visit to the UAE, included details related to the “establishment of a UAE K-City” as a symbol of bilateral co-operation and a site that intends to fuse the best of culture, business and food. Now, that sounds like a city of today and tomorrow.