Abu Dhabi vs. Dubai - The Rivalry

This article in the Telegraph is one of the only articles I've read that touches upon the unspoken rivalry between Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

It comes after the recent announcement that the Abu Dhabi government has bought the Manchester City football club AND invested 500 million pounds into Warner Brothers.

But all of Abu Dhabi's recent investments into art, culture, sports and movies are not an attempt to mimic Dubai's growth formula, because Abu Dhabi doesn't need the cash as badly as Dubai does apparently:

On the surface, what’s happening in Abu Dhabi mirrors Dubai. But what’s driving its growth is different. Dubai is a story of survival, of how one small city that is running out of oil – it has less than one per cent of Abu Dhabi’s reserves – is saving itself with a mixture of tourism and commercialism, hookahs and hookers. Thanks to oil, Abu Dhabi is not in a rush. It wants to build itself into a global city-state, but is determined to do it with none of the crassness (think prostitution, drunkenness and financial scandal) that is now beginning to tarnish Dubai’s image.

The article also touches upon the personal feud that fuels the rivalry between the 2 cities, which I was also unaware of:

The Nahyans and the ruling Maktoums of Dubai are cousins. They are cordial in public, but compete furiously behind each others’ dishdashas. The Nayhans are irked that poorer Dubai has so far attracted most of the foreign investment, five-star resorts and high-spending tourists in the UAE. They are running fast to catch up.

An interesting read that made me wonder what's in store for Abu Dhabi in the coming years. Will it really be able to differentiate itself from Dubai? Will it really do things differently? Will it be better?

Only time will tell I guess...