With the opening of Mushrif Central Park this month, and the news that the municipality plans to finish five more parks in Abu Dhabi this year, it seems we have never been better off for green spaces. In fact, open spaces have long been part of the city’s landscape from the earliest days.
One of the first was Khalidiya Park, at the end of Khaleej Al Arabi Street, which was laid down in the early 1970s.
This photograph from the archives of our sister paper Al Ittihad shows the old Mushrif Park and one of the rides that made it such a popular place for families in the 1980s and 1990s.
The rides have now gone, but with a Dh179 million facelift that includes an animal barn, a children’s garden and an amphitheatre, it is just as much a people’s park in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.
* James Langton
