Baku's Quest to Become a Major City: Did the Dubai Model Work?

Abstract

Baku's post-Soviet development has been marked by massive deindustrialization, gentrification of the city core, and commercialization of the downtown area. The oil boom brought not only relative economic prosperity but also a new vision of urban development. In their quest to make Baku the leading city in the region, urban administrators have chosen Dubai as a model of development. A decade of emulating Dubai's success has shown that despite the fact that Baku employed the right strategies, many factors prevented Azerbaijan’s capital to reach the same level of development as Dubai.