Bluewaters Promenade

The four parts of Bluewaters Island were linked by a single pedestrian network so that housing, hotels, retail, and restaurants would not end up apart. Its open paved strip runs along the facades, while short passages lead into courtyards and small squares. This route was planned for residents, hotel guests, and visitors to shops and restaurants.

In February two thousand fifteen, the developer Meraas was seeking eight hundred sixty million dirhams from banks. The loan was needed for the retail spaces around the future Ain Dubai observation wheel. Shops and restaurants on the artificial island were meant to generate revenue, but first people had to be drawn here and persuaded to stay.

This was the responsibility of the team led by Michelle Seaywood, Meraas's senior vice president for design. She framed the task as a straightforward business question: what kind of environment needs to be created so that people will want to come and spend money? They decided not to separate residents, tourists, hotels, and retail into distinct areas. Between the buildings, they left courtyards, alleys, streets, small squares, and this promenade. Landscape designers used them to link the island's four parts, while shops were given facades facing pedestrians.

The risk became apparent immediately after Bluewaters Island opened in November two thousand eighteen. The Wharf retail district was intended to contain one hundred thirty-two shops and restaurants, yet during one of the first press inspections, only a single cafe was open. The other units were still waiting for tenants. For a project costing around six billion dirhams, attractive paving was not enough: Seaywood needed to prove that the meeting places she had designed would really draw people.

By April two thousand twenty-five, the management team counted more than thirty restaurants and more than thirty shops on the island. Then, in February of the following year, the promenade was given over to street performers for the first time. The organizers distributed twenty-five performers among four locations; no stages, barriers, or ticket booths stood between them and the public. A performer could be supported by cashless transfer.

At one of the locations, Salina Bakau performed—a circus artist who lived solely from performing and had long sought the opportunity to work on Bluewaters Island. She spun several hoops, joked, and brought a volunteer out of the gathered crowd. Dozens of people stopped around her. What Seaywood had once drawn as a meeting place between restaurants became an artist's workplace for several weeks.

The program ended on March first, two thousand twenty-six. No stage was dismantled afterward: there had been no stage here. What remained were four stretches of ordinary promenade, where performers and spectators were separated only by an open strip of paving.