Urban planners are all good and well, but if Sheikh so-and-so wants to build a palace on a public beach, then he will. Abu Dhabi has exactly the same problem - 100s of km of coast, and 99% of it inaccessible because someone built a palace there and fenced it all off, or because it's next to an oil field/terminal/pipeline.

On top of that, I get the impression that urban planning in the UAE follows the American model whereby "walking" is a term with no meaning.