I discovered the above the hard way in a warm-up run two days before I ran the Dubai Marathon earlier this year. You cannot run along the beach there.

I was amazed at how poorly planned Dubai is, given its wealth and recent development. When we see an urban mess like this in Bangkok or Jakarta, we need to take into account how poor those cities were until recently. Dubai does not have that excuse.

I cannot understand why urban planners in Dubai did not preserve public beach-front access across the gulf. Walking across the city's major thoroughfares is a harrowing adventure. I wonder if they even had urban planners.