Happy Bloody New Year, The Times. Love, Dubai.

So, The Times embraced the seasonal spirit of goodwill, cheer and positivity with a lovely little piece decrying the obscenity of the Burj Dubai, and pitting it head to head with Masdar down the road - I quote - "the new city of Masdar, now being built in Abu Dhabi as a carbon-neutral eco-city (call it the green suburb of Babel), will stand as an architectural rebuke to the great tower of hubris next door"

There is a lot wrong with this town, I am the first to admit it. But there is a lot right, and I just really feel like these are cheap shots - this story echoes all of the other Dubai-bashing articles that have gone before, offers very little that is new. However, from a local perspective, the direct comparison between Masdar & the Burj Dubai is really interesting, and this is the first time I have read such a direct comparison with such explicit value judgements thrown down.

Masdar is an interesting concept, and if they can pull it off as intended, it will be an incredible achievement. It will indeed serve as a model of how cities can be built in the future, and could be an interesting blueprint for the region, where cities are still being built from scratch, and there is room for this kind of growth. Hopefully, the Masdar team is pioneering practices that can be adapted to cities that have been in existence for hundreds of years, as it is really there that we need to start putting carbon reduction measures in place, rather than focusing on some green utopia that we can create out when given a blank slate, unlimited land, a booming population, and bottomless pit of oil wealth. Not really a transferable model to most countries?

I for one am looking forward to the opening of the Burj in a week or so. It astounds me every time I go for dinner to the Souk al Bahar how many people gather to take photos of the tower, to ooh and ahh (and applaud?) the fountains, which are actually stunningly beautiful. It is a tourist attraction, built in the Gulf, for the Middle Eastern and Asian market, and it works. People here love the clean lines, love the powerful water jets, and choreographed antics of the fountains as they dance to opera, Lebanese folk, Celine Dion, or music hall hits. It's not my scene, but it works. And that is the point.

The tower may be OTT, and to many it will always symbolise the end of Dubai's property boom, but to many others it is an achievement that puts their country, their region, on the global map. These bitter articles always have a tone of something not far from jealousy - like an aging sportsman making snide remarks about the slapdash style of the bright young thing lifting all the trophies... they may be right, but they still aren't winning anymore.

For me, I hope that the opening of the Burj will mark the beginning of a slightly more sensible era, with scaled down madness. It will be flashy, it will be mental, and it will be very, very, 90's Dubai. Perhaps there is a parallel to be made about Dubai living it's flashy 30s (the UAE turned 38 in early Dec) and looking to settle down with a family and a more sedate lifestyle as it looks towards the onset of the big 40 in 2011? I hope so. Because this place has been pretty damn great for me this decade, and I would love to see it succeed in the next one.