Every year I'm reminded that what we're doing is not normal.
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It’s not normal..
My friends' kids have friend groups that are from the Philippines, South Africa, Lebanon, and Brazil. If you find this completely unremarkable. I think that’s the caveat.
Children grow up thinking the world is full of people who are different from them, and that's just... fine. Expected and normal. Meanwhile, kids not in a city that looks a lot more homogenous are having that realization at 25, if they have it at all.
Kids who grow up here don't have a "meeting someone different from me" moment. It's just Tuesday. That rewires something, and you don't fully appreciate it until you watch someone have that experience for the first time at 32 at a work conference.
It's not normal.
The city also does something weird to your standards. You live here long enough and you stop accepting things that don't work. The roads get built. The app works. The thing you needed arrived.
You go somewhere else for two weeks, and you're standing in a queue thinking why is this queue and you can't fully remember why you used to think this was fine.
It's not normal.
I don't have a profound conclusion. I just think we forget sometimes.
There are people living in Bali-style villas with a pool in this city and also making serious money.
I know. I find it a bit offensive too.
But it's real, and I've seen it, and some of them are my clients, so I feel like I should mention it. The combination shouldn't work, city this fast, life this calm, but somehow it does. People who made this move stopped feeling like they were sprinting through Dubai and started feeling like they actually live here.
If you've been thinking about it, talk to me. I'll show you what it looks like on paper and you can decide.
Emaar is restructuring in Syria and I couldn't not include this.
So. Emaar has a project near Damascus called The Eighth Gate. Launched 2005, 300,000sqm, master-planned community, $500 million plan. They built it through a joint venture.
That joint venture is done. Emaar is continuing in Syria alone now — Alabbar called it a "reset." Which sounds diplomatic but means: we want to move faster without a co-pilot.
The context that makes this interesting: last week the same man said he's putting $18 billion into Syria. Real estate, tourism, infrastructure. Damascus. The coastline.
So the JV ending isn't the story. The $18 billion is the story. The JV ending is just him clearing the runway.
Worth watching.
Until next time,
Lisa 008
ISSUE 008 / MAY BRIEFING
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