Carlos Wakim

Building ahead of demand: The cities that never run out of room

The core message of the available session transcript is that cities “never run out of room” when housing, infrastructure, financing, and quality-of-life planning are treated as competitive infrastructure rather than as isolated real estate supply. The host framed the challenge directly: growing cities face people arriving faster than homes do, and the winners are those where supply keeps pace with ambition. Talal Al Dhiyebi opened by grounding livability in everyday life in Abu Dhabi: airports open, malls busy, construction sites moving, parks full, schools growing, and businesses expanding. For Aldar, he said livability is personal because its daily touchpoints connect 750,000 people, and its purpose is to positively impact people’s lives through communities, schools, workplaces, retail destinations, hotels, services, and experiences. Talal’s remarks emphasized that real estate is not simply buildings but people, customers, safety, wellness, sustainability, sports, lifestyle, and the feeling that Abu Dhabi is home. He linked this approach to Abu Dhabi’s coordinated leadership vision and pointed to continued public ambition through projects in culture, sports, and entertainment, including Dar Al Funun on Saadiyat, The Sphere on Yas Island, Mursa Saadiyat, and others. His argument was that Abu Dhabi’s differentiation comes from a cohesive focus on livability and quality of life even during difficult periods, with public and private actors continuing to move forward rather than pause. Moderator Harish Consul then positioned the panel around building ahead of demand as more than forecasting population growth. He described it as a long-term Emirates vision requiring coordinated planning, government collaboration, investment, services, wellness and longevity, AI incorporation, experiential living, and a broader range of housing and community offers. Carlos Wakim argued that Abu Dhabi’s development model is unusually organized, with each developer having a defined positioning and with coordination led by government authorities. He said this reduces chaos, keeps demand and sales strong, and pushes development toward a more human-centric, community-based model, even if tighter government orchestration can make the process more demanding for developers. Bill O’Regan extended the discussion from housing to underlying and social infrastructure, saying coordination with DMT covers utilities, transport, mosques, community modules, schools, and master planning. He stressed delivering infrastructure “just in time and ahead of the need,” while using creative financing so it does not become a burden on developments. For Modon, PPP models create recurring income but also strategically enable decisions about when to unlock land value through infrastructure provision. He added that Abu Dhabi’s track record matters: since 2006, its population has more than doubled, making another doubling over the next fifteen to twenty years credible in local historical context, even if it might sound absurd elsewhere.