Last affordable homes vanish as Dubai tower faces wrecking ball

Until a few weeks ago, the 15-storey tower known as the Toyota Building offered something rare in Dubai: affordable shelter. A single apartment could house as many as 15 people, and monthly rents of 1,600 dirhams, roughly $430, sat far below a neighbourhood norm that ran as high as five times that amount. Now the tower stands empty, its occupants dispersed, awaiting demolition by 2027.

The evacuation fits a wider civic agenda. In August, the emirate enacted a law to regulate shared housing, curb overcrowding and unregulated living arrangements, and preserve the city’s aesthetic appearance. The Toyota Building received no exemption. Dubai authorities did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

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For residents, the departure came abruptly. Himanshu, 29, who spent three years in the building, said the decision arrived without warning. “Suddenly, the authorities came and they cut off the electricity. It has been a very hard time for us. We don’t know anything,” he said. From his modest room he had enjoyed an unobstructed view of the Burj Khalifa while paying rent that was a fraction of typical prices nearby.

Rana, a 29-year-old Pakistani national who lived there for six years and managed a ground-floor cafeteria, said the tower held “a lot of memories”. “The Toyota Building was my family… I’ll miss it.” Himanshu, who founded a travel agency, said the building was tied to his livelihood as much as his daily life. “This building is part of my professional journey also. I started my business from this building.”

Their accounts point to a larger question about who belongs in a city transformed at extraordinary speed. Architect and author Todd Reisz notes that since the turn of the century the Toyota Building has been “inhabited by some of the city’s less wealthy residents and largely South Asian, as the surrounding area was marked for much more luxurious development”. Dubai attracts millions of visitors annually as well as workers from all around the world, and the fate of housing for those workers is increasingly bound up with the city’s drive to remake its skyline and its image.

That image took a hit during the Middle East war, when Iran struck some of Dubai’s major landmarks, denting the city’s reputation as a safe haven in a tumultuous region. Against that backdrop, removing an ageing tower may seem a small matter. Yet for many, the building is one of the last physical links to a Dubai that has all but disappeared.

When it was completed, the structure rose above a quiet, unassuming city on the edge of the desert. Construction began in 1974, coinciding with the development of the Dubai World Trade Centre, according to Reisz, author of “Showpiece City: How Architecture Made Dubai”. A photograph in his book, taken in February 1979, shows the structure nearing completion. Dubai then counted fewer than 200,000 people; today it is home to more than four million.

Originally named the “Nasser Rashid Lootah” building, it became associated with Japanese carmaker Toyota after the company installed its red advertising sign there in 1981, displaying its name in English. Jacques Brent, managing director of the Al-Futtaim Toyota retailer, said the building’s “prominent location provided an exceptional opportunity to showcase the billboard”, adding that for many, landmarks like the Toyota Building are “linked to an earlier era of Dubai”.

Hani Al-Qassem, 57, a longtime resident who settled in Dubai with his family in 1974, recalls the area as once considered the gateway to the desert. Residents identified it by the “Defence Roundabout”, a landmark that has since evolved into an intersection lined with commercial buildings, offices, luxury hotels and the glitzy Dubai Mall. Reisz said the building stood in contrast with the “transformation of Sheikh Zayed Road, known until the 1990s as Abu Dhabi Road, into the major spine organising development in Dubai”.

The Nasser Rashid Lootah Group, which manages the property, previously informed local media of the decision to demolish it by 2027 and declined to respond to requests for comment from AFP. The tower now appears incongruous against a backdrop of luxury skyscrapers near the 163-storey Burj Khalifa.

What remains is a final relic of a history that is rapidly disappearing, and a reminder that the city’s rise was built, in part, by the ordinary residents now being asked to move on.