Last week I went to Dubai for business trip. Last time I was there around May last year and I can say that the city changed a lot.
However, the worst thing I have experienced is not changing city but the heat that makes you suffer everywhere. It's is probably a demo version of hell and how you will get boiled in hell... but it is sufficient demo version. The temperatures there reach 50 C with humidity at 90% or so. This makes feeling like being slowly boiled or like a chicken on the grill. Walking 20 seconds from taxi to hotel is sufficient to make clothes wet. Just because the body explodes with sweat. I really wonder how people can live there... Getting to the street side is even worse. The temperatures next to the roads are crazy.
Another thing that makes this place sick is traffic. This city is dead with traffic and it gets worse day by day. Last year I was there the traffic was heavy. This year, the streets were just blocked. If one needs 50 minutes to travel 1.5km in a car (and it is not during traffic hours) then it becomes really crazy. People need hours to commute.
Although the city grows. Burj Dubaj is also growing. It is the second tallest building in the world right now and the construction is in the middle or so. Although Burj Dubai is not just this one tall structure. It is 350 towers for apartments and a few football stadiums sized shopping mall with 1200 shops. And yet... there are no roads that will connect this area with rest of Dubai. It will be one big crazy traffic to go and get out from there.
Palms are also growing... If one can afford living there. I could enjoy watching development of The Palm Jebel Ali from my hotel window. It looks really impressive how we steal from the sea... question is why, when there is like thousands of kilometers of desert around.
Anyway... Dubai is terrible place to live right now. So crowded, so overpriced and so over heated (not only in sense of temperature).