The DIFC prepares to launch

Anyone who has visited the Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai over the past year can not fail to have noticed the signboards showing the site of the upcoming Dubai International Financial Centre, and its triumphal arch building The Gate.

This huge site is to be a 'financial city within a city' set on a four-storey podium containing a car park for 37,000 vehicles, the largest in the world by a wide margin. There will be some 14 buildings of up to 60-storeys tall, of which 10 have been sold freehold to developers either for sole development or in a joint venture with the DIFC.

The DIFC already has its own register for property titles, and is legally able to sell freehold under UAE law thanks to its Federal Decree issued earlier this summer.

This puts the project rather ahead of Emaar Properties, for example, which can not yet register its owners' titles in the case of non-nationals, although there is a cast-iron promise to do so when it is possible.

The four-storey podium on which the whole DIFC sits is crucial to understanding its architecture. This means that the whole ground level is a pedestrian zone.

Cars go in tunnels under this level, and passengers also have covered walkways, people-movers and passages so that they never have to walk without air-conditioning while within the complex.

There will be everything the modern financial executive could need within the DIFC: twice as much retail space as the Deira City Centre shopping mall, for instance, plus a cinema, concert hall and even a baggage check-in for Dubai International Airport.

You will also be able to live and work in the DIFC with around 40% of space given over to residential condominiums, and there are plenty of parks to enjoy in the cooler summer months.

However, this project will not be built overnight. Originally plans envisaged a 2010 completion date but this had been brought forward to late 2008.

Meanwhile, financial institutions awarded a license by the Dubai Financial Services Authority will be able to operate from anywhere in the emirate.

Sources indicate that 44 firms have applied for licenses which should follow shortly after an official decree from the Dubai Government creating the centre; none has dropped out since the staff changes at the DFSA earlier this summer.

It is hard not to be impressed by the boldness of the vision of the DIFC. This will be the only financial centre in the world to be planned from the start, and there has been great attention to detail.

For the DIFC does not just intend to be a world-class community it wants to set the standards by which others are judged, and with all the naturally advantages of Dubai as a regional business hub and established cosmopolitan city, the success of the project looks assured and with it the further evolution of Dubai.