In fast-changing Dubai, once-isolated village to be razed

The bulldozers have come for one of the last bastions of “old” Dubai, an eclectic collection of homes built in the late 1970s for European port workers when the exuberance of today's Dubai was unthinkable

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- From the front porch of their cinderblock home, Garry and Amanda James gaze over Dubai’s soaring skyscrapers and massive malls.

It’s a skyline that in their young days had seemed impossibly far off. Outside Amanda’s childhood home in the same spot three decades ago were just miles of empty desert.

Throughout Dubai’s meteoric rise from tiny pearling town to booming financial hub, Jebel Ali Village, a collection of cottages built in the late 1970s for European port workers, largely stayed the same.

It’s a relic of another time. Expat residents still amble along quiet, windswept roads and play Christmas bingo at the clubhouse.