Last September, Dubai announced a new initiative called the Urban Think Tank & Design Lab (officially D.M-ULab). Then, this month, they announced that architects Santiago Calatrava and Kengo Kuma would be joining the think tank as "principal contributors."
The lab is focused on several key areas, but grouping them together, it's broadly focused on encouraging participatory design (as opposed to top-down planning), driving the use of new technologies such as AI, and enhancing quality of life through human-centric urban design.
This includes the creation of 20-minute communities where 80% of daily needs are within walking or riding distance.
This last focus area is particularly interesting because one could easily argue that modern Dubai started on the opposite end of this spectrum. Rather than focusing on the human scale, it was focused on the global-attention-grabbing-superlative scale.
When a remarkable new building is announced, the focus tends to be on the building as a symbolic object, not how it meets the ground and fits into its broader urban context. That's largely irrelevant to a global audience.
But it is this latter quality that will largely determine how human-centric the city ends up feeling — it's the spaces in between the buildings where public life happens.
So, how does this think tank intend to shift the city's focus? One of the first projects is the renewal of the city's older neighbourhoods through the creation of Barcelona-like superblocks that push vehicular traffic to their edges.
It's an admirable move, but it is noteworthy that this implementation is planned for the city's older neighbourhoods. Older neighbourhoods have the advantage of street grids that are already more human-centric in scale.
The true test of this lab will be whether it can transform its newer neighbourhoods. If it succeeds, it will be a model worth exporting to the rest of the world.
Cover photo by Dubai Travel Blog on Unsplash
My palms are sweating as I write this post, because even the thought of someone free soloing a skyscraper makes me clammy. (Free solo means climbing with no ropes.) But that's what climber Alex Honnold is scheduled to do live, on Netflix, on January 23, 2026, at 8 PM ET.
He will be climbing Taipei 101, which is over 500 meters tall, one of the tallest buildings in the world, and formerly the world's tallest. Dubai's Burj Khalifa stole this superlative in 2009 when it was completed.
My palms continue to sweat, but Alex is of the opinion that, as far as enormous towers go, this one is relatively safe for free soloing:
Honnold said the shape of the building makes it safer to climb because there are balconies every eight floors. “You could actually fall in tons of places and not actually die, which makes it safer than a lot of rock climbing objectives,” he said.
I can see the logic.
The architecture of Taipei 101 consists of inverted trapezoids that are stacked on top of each other. Each is 8 storeys tall and they angle outward as you move up, creating a roof condition or terrace on top of each module.
Eight is an important number in Chinese culture because of a homophone in Mandarin; the number sounds like "to prosper" or "to make a fortune." So that's why the modules are the height that they are.
It is now also dawning on me that the nested modules of One Delisle are 8 storeys tall. That's good! This was never talked about during the design phase, but now that I'm aware of it, I'm going to pretend it was deliberate.
I guess this also means that One Delisle would be a relatively safe building to free solo climb. Please, nobody try this.
Good luck, Alex.
I recently tweeted a photo of 701 Côte de la Place-d'Armes in Montréal and asked: Who says buildings need stepbacks?
The response was exactly as I expected. Modern planning, as you know, is obsessed with setbacks, stepbacks, angular planes, shadow studies, skyviews, and lots of other things that inform the overall massing of new buildings. But then you point out a building like 701 Côte de la Place-d'Armes — which is not set back from the street and does not have any stepbacks above — and lots of people seem to love it.
In fact, I specifically chose to share this building because it's exactly the kind of architecture and urban design that conveys the feeling of grandeur I get when I'm in Montréal. I also chose it because it's taller than six storeys, which is the height that Toronto is hoping to one day deliver along its major streets at scale.
But here's a question: If this stepback-less building is so great, why are stepbacks so in-demand?
Firstly, I should point out that when the building was completed in 1870, it only had five floors. The top floor was an attic storey and had a mansard roof reminiscent of Haussmannian Second Empire architecture.
Then in 1909, the attic floor was removed, and three new floors were added (a net increase of two floors). If you look closely above the fourth floor, you'll see a slightly different architectural expression, but one that remains harmonious with the original design of the building.
This approach breaks many of the rules for how modern planning thinks about heritage buildings. Today, it is likely that someone would have asked for a stepback above the existing building, with a completely new expression above it. Admittedly, this can produce desirable results. But it's not what was decided in 1909, and the result is a very handsome building.
This gets us back to our original question: Why do we insist on stepbacks, but still like architecture like this one so much? I think there are at least two answers at play here.
The first has to do with architecture and design. If you were to pluck random people off the street and ask them about their architectural tastes, I would bet you that more people would prefer something Neoclassical or Beaux-Arts over something modern. And if people actually like the architecture, then I think they become more comfortable with scale, or perceived scale.
The second answer has to do with the fact that one way to look at stepbacks is as a defensive architectural tool. They have become a tool we use when someone doesn't actually want a building to be built. We use them to try and soften the massing by hiding as much of it as possible.
The problem with this approach is that it also means we're not playing offence. And if you want urban grandeur, I think you need to play offence. You need to be confident and decisive about what you're trying to do. And I think this is part of the reason why so many people seem to like 701 Côte de la Place-d'Armes. It is all of these things, and it's not in their backyard.
Cover photo by Macy Nguyen on Unsplash; historic photo from Hôtel Place d'Armes