After delays attributed to the global economic recession, construction has begun on two of Abu Dhabi’s five planned cultural buildings—the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museums. The five facilities will form an emerging cultural district on Saadiyat Island, located 500 meters from the city of Abu Dhabi, which serves as the capital of the United Arab Emirates. Officials at Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Co. (TDIC), which is developing the island, say they are using the recession to take advantage of reduced prices in construction materials and equipment. TDIC officials decline to give a value on

Abu Dhabi’s Union Railway Co. has begun the procurement process for a roughly $11-billion rail network that will span the United Arab Emirates. Bids for a contract to design and build the fixed infrastructure are due this October. + Image Map: Walter Konefal For ENR Rail network will connect the emirates, and ultimately link up with lines being built in neighboring countries. Scheduled to be complete by 2018, the 1,300-kilometer network would be the first in the Gulf nation. The project will be “world-class,” says Union’s chief executive officer, Richard Bowker. Construction on the 240-km first phase, which is scheduled

One of the world’s most ambitious urban development initiatives is taking place in Doha, the capital of the Gulf kingdom of Qatar. Photo: Courtesy Of Hochtief Infrastructure master plan includes commercial and residential centers, along with an airport and seaport. Even in a region known for brash city-building, Qatar’s plans will radically enlarge its urban footprint in the next decade to accommodate hundreds of thousands of additional residents with new housing, commercial and tourism centers through about a half-dozen projects. These projects include a plan by the state-owned developer Dohaland to re-create Doha’s downtown using more traditional Gulf architecture; further,

Oman plans to generate thousands of liters of water a day thanks to a budding technology that collects and stores fog droplets. Photo By Angela Shah A fog collection net captures mist and turns it into water to grow 1,000 trees and help reverse desertification. In the second year of a five-year “fog collection project,” Omani officials, in collaboration with Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp., have placed large nets made of plastic mesh at about 700 meter above sea level in the Al Qara mountains near Salalah, in the southern part of the nation. The collector is comprised of four 20-m-wide, 3-m-tall