Daily life in Dubai during the 1970s

A grounded look at a Gulf trading town becoming an oil-era city, where creek commerce, new ports, villas, apartments, construction sites, mosques, souks, and migrant labor shaped ordinary routines.

Dubai in the 1970s changed with unusual speed. Oil exports had begun in 1969, the United Arab Emirates formed in 1971, Port Rashid opened in 1972, and Jebel Ali Port opened at the end of the decade. Daily life still centered on Dubai Creek, Deira, Bur Dubai, Shindagha, Jumeirah, markets, mosques, schools, and family compounds, but residents also lived with road building, concrete construction, imported goods, new government offices, and a growing population of workers from South Asia, Iran, other Arab countries, and nearby Gulf communities. The result was not a sudden replacement of old routines, but a crowded transition in which barasti houses, wind-tower courtyards, Land Rovers, abras, air conditioners, sewing machines, and port cranes belonged to the same urban landscape.

Housing and Living Spaces

Housing in 1970s Dubai ranged from older coral-stone courtyard houses and wind-tower homes to palm-frond barasti dwellings, concrete villas, small apartment blocks, shopfront rooms, government housing, and labor camps near construction sites or port works. Older districts along the creek, especially Deira, Bur Dubai, Shindagha, and Al Fahidi, still contained compact lanes, shaded courtyards, family compounds, storerooms, roof sleeping areas, and houses arranged around privacy, hospitality, and airflow. Wind towers, thick walls, high windows, mats, curtains, and shaded passages helped people manage heat before mechanical cooling became widespread. Many families used rooms flexibly: sitting with guests, eating, sleeping, storing bedding, and receiving relatives could happen in the same space at different times of day.

The decade brought rapid change in building materials and expectations. Concrete blocks, cement plaster, glass louvers, metal doors, tiled bathrooms, piped water, electric lighting, ceiling fans, refrigerators, and window air conditioners appeared in better-off homes and newer villas. Some Emirati families moved from older creek houses or barasti settlements into planned houses with more private rooms, enclosed kitchens, bathrooms, and car access. Jumeirah and other expanding areas developed as residential districts, while the commercial core remained crowded with shops, offices, warehouses, hotels, and rented rooms. For shopkeepers and small traders, home and work could still be connected, with family members sleeping above or behind a shop and using the street, mosque, and nearby market as extensions of domestic space.

Not everyone experienced the new city in the same way. Migrant workers often lived in shared rooms, temporary compounds, barracks, or employer-provided quarters, sometimes far from the older neighborhoods where shopping and social life took place. Construction workers, port laborers, drivers, domestic workers, clerks, and mechanics adapted to tight sleeping space, communal washing, shared cooking, and long commutes by truck, bus, or on foot. Household labor also changed. Water, electricity, and appliances reduced some tasks, but dust, heat, frequent building work, and larger houses created new routines of cleaning, maintenance, and repair. Across Dubai, living spaces reflected a city moving from creek-side settlement toward a modern municipality while still relying on family networks, neighborhood trust, and climate-conscious habits inherited from earlier decades.

Food and Daily Meals

Food in 1970s Dubai reflected the Gulf coast, Bedouin ties, Indian Ocean trade, and the city's growing migrant population. Emirati household meals often centered on rice, fish, dates, flatbread, lamb or goat when affordable, chicken, lentils, ghee, yogurt, spices, and sweet tea or coffee. Dishes such as machboos, harees, thareed, grilled or dried fish, saloona, luqaimat, and date-based sweets appeared according to season, income, and occasion. Fish from the Gulf, rice from South Asia, spices from India and Iran, and dates from oasis agriculture connected the dinner table to trade routes as well as local production. Families still valued hospitality, so coffee, dates, incense, and a place for guests remained important even in homes that now had refrigerators or tiled kitchens.

Shopping was daily and practical. The souks of Deira and Bur Dubai supplied rice sacks, tea, cardamom, flour, textiles, fish, meat, vegetables, dried limes, clarified butter, kerosene, enamelware, and imported tins. The fish market, creek-side landing places, grocery shops, bakeries, and small restaurants helped households manage food in a hot climate. Refrigerators and freezers became more common among salaried families and merchants, but many people still bought fresh ingredients in small amounts and depended on dried, salted, or canned foods. Cooking equipment varied from charcoal and kerosene stoves to gas burners, pressure cookers, aluminum pots, large rice pans, hand mills, coffee pots, and later more electric appliances. Meals followed prayer, school, work, and heat rather than a single rigid schedule.

Public eating became more visible as the labor force expanded. Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, Arab, and local cafeterias served rice plates, curries, lentils, bread, tea, kebabs, shawarma, snacks, and inexpensive meals for men working in shops, offices, transport, construction, and the port. Some workers cooked collectively in shared quarters, pooling money for rice, onions, spices, fish, or meat when wages allowed. Domestic workers and women in family homes did much of the invisible food labor: washing rice, cleaning fish, preparing spice mixtures, boiling water, serving elders, packing food, and cleaning dishes. Ramadan, Eid visits, weddings, funerals, and Friday gatherings shaped special food obligations, while ordinary meals showed the city's position between older Gulf hospitality and a more commercial, multi-ethnic urban food economy.

Work and Labor

Work in 1970s Dubai was shaped by oil revenue, older trading habits, and an enormous demand for construction and services. The creek and souks remained central. Merchants handled textiles, gold, electronics, spices, foodstuffs, building materials, and re-export goods; dhow captains and crews moved cargo between Dubai, Iran, India, Pakistan, East Africa, and other Gulf ports; shopkeepers, porters, boatmen, customs workers, money changers, tailors, mechanics, and clerks kept trade moving at street level. Port Rashid shifted some heavy cargo away from the creek after 1972, but the creek still mattered for smaller vessels, regional trade, abras, workshops, warehouses, and daily movement between Deira and Bur Dubai. By the late decade, work connected increasingly to Jebel Ali, dry docks, roads, power, water, and planned industrial expansion.

Construction was one of the most visible forms of labor. Workers built villas, apartments, schools, hospitals, offices, hotels, port facilities, drainage systems, roads, bridges, and government buildings. Sites depended on engineers, foremen, masons, carpenters, electricians, drivers, crane operators, welders, painters, surveyors, cooks, guards, and laborers who often worked long days in severe heat. Oil work itself employed fewer people than construction and trade, but its revenue supported the public projects that changed daily routines. Government departments, police, customs, schools, clinics, banks, airlines, hotels, and municipal offices hired clerks, typists, teachers, nurses, drivers, translators, accountants, inspectors, and office messengers. English, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Persian, and Malayalam could all be heard in different workplaces.

Women's work was both domestic and public. Emirati women managed households, children, guests, clothing, food, kin obligations, and sometimes home-based craft or trading tasks, while education opened more paths into teaching, nursing, clerical work, and public service. Women from migrant communities worked in domestic service, sewing, nursing, schools, shops, and family businesses, though public visibility varied by class, nationality, and household expectation. Fishing, small farming in gardens or nearby oases, animal care, and date-related work still mattered for some families, but the wage economy was expanding quickly. Wages supported relatives abroad or in other emirates, and remittances became part of household planning. Workdays were structured by heat, prayer times, transport, employer rules, payday, and the need to navigate a city where opportunity and insecurity were growing together.

Social Structure

Dubai's social structure in the 1970s combined older local hierarchies with the new realities of a fast-growing Gulf city. Emirati society included ruling-family circles, merchant families, tribal and kin groups, fishermen, former pearling families, religious figures, government employees, and families with roots in desert, coastal, and oasis life. Status rested on lineage, reputation, wealth, service to the ruler, religious respectability, business success, generosity, and the ability to support relatives. The majlis remained a key social institution, allowing men to exchange news, seek help, discuss business, and maintain ties with patrons, officials, neighbors, and kin. Mosques, weddings, funerals, Eid visits, and family compounds organized much of social life outside formal offices.

Merchants held particular influence because Dubai had long depended on trade more than oil. Arab, Persian, Indian, and other trading families linked the city to ports across the Gulf and Indian Ocean, and some moved easily between warehouse, office, home, mosque, and ruler's court. The oil boom did not erase this commercial culture; it gave it new scale through imported goods, shipping services, banking, contracting, and property. At the same time, the population grew through migration. South Asian construction workers, Iranian traders, Arab professionals, Western engineers and managers, domestic workers, drivers, and service employees lived alongside citizens but under different legal, economic, and social conditions. Citizenship, sponsorship, language, occupation, and employer control shaped daily security.

Class differences became more visible as villas, cars, televisions, air conditioning, and private schooling spread among wealthier households, while workers in shared quarters lived with tighter budgets and fewer comforts. Education became an important marker of mobility. Boys and girls attended expanding schools, and families increasingly valued literacy, English, technical skills, and government employment. Gender expectations remained shaped by family honor, religion, privacy, and respectability, but the decade also brought more schooling, clinics, paid employment, and public institutions into women's lives. Social relations were therefore layered: a small citizen population with strong kin ties and state access, influential merchant networks, a growing salaried middle group, and a large foreign workforce whose labor made the new city possible. Everyday cooperation happened in shops, offices, schools, clinics, and building sites, but rights, housing, and long-term security were deeply unequal.

Tools and Technology

Everyday technology in 1970s Dubai ranged from old maritime tools to imported consumer goods. Abras, dhows, ropes, anchors, cargo nets, wooden handcarts, weighing scales, sewing machines, cash boxes, ledgers, and repair tools remained common in the creek and souks. Building sites used concrete mixers, scaffolding, generators, welding sets, cranes, trucks, bulldozers, survey equipment, and water tankers. Offices relied on typewriters, carbon paper, rubber stamps, telephones, filing cabinets, telex machines, calculators, and messenger systems. Schools used blackboards, exercise books, uniforms, maps, and crowded classrooms.

Household technology was unevenly distributed. Radios, fans, kerosene stoves, gas cylinders, enamel pots, aluminum cookware, mosquito screens, hand pumps, plastic buckets, and sewing machines were ordinary items. Wealthier homes added refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, air conditioners, tiled bathrooms, cars, record players, and telephones. Land Rovers, pickup trucks, taxis, buses, bicycles, and later more private cars changed the scale of daily errands, though walking and creek crossings by abra remained routine. Electricity, desalinated or piped water, street lighting, paved roads, airport facilities, port cranes, and municipal services made the city feel more modern, but outages, dust, heat, sand, repair needs, and unequal access kept improvisation central to daily life. Repair shops and spare-parts dealers mattered because imported machines had to survive salt air, heavy use, and difficult heat.

Clothing and Materials

Clothing in 1970s Dubai reflected climate, modesty, occupation, income, and a growing market for imported fabrics. Emirati men commonly wore the kandura or dishdasha, with ghutra or shemagh head coverings, sandals, bishts for formal occasions, and lighter fabrics suited to heat. Emirati women wore abayas, shaylas or other head coverings in public, and colorful dresses, embroidered garments, gold jewelry, perfumes, and henna in family and festive settings. Tailors and textile shops were important because cloth was purchased, cut, altered, repaired, and reused. Cotton, light wool, synthetic blends, silk, nylon, polyester, and embroidered fabrics all circulated through the souks.

Migrant workers dressed for work and budget as much as fashion: cotton shirts, trousers, lungis, salwar kameez, saris, sandals, work boots, helmets, coveralls, uniforms, and company-issued clothing appeared in streets, camps, shops, and worksites. Office workers wore pressed shirts, trousers, dresses, suits, ties, and polished shoes, while schoolchildren wore uniforms that signaled discipline and family investment in education. Materials changing the built environment also shaped daily life: concrete, corrugated metal, plywood, aluminum, glass, plastic containers, vinyl flooring, ceramic tiles, asphalt, steel reinforcement, and imported appliances became familiar alongside palm fronds, coral stone, gypsum, woven mats, wool rugs, and wooden doors. Laundry dried on roofs, courtyards, balconies, and lines near shared quarters, making clothing care part of the visible city. Dress balanced respectability, religious norms, occupational need, and the practical challenge of heat and dust.

Daily life in 1970s Dubai was defined by transition rather than by a single image of sudden modernity. Creek traders, fishing families, schoolchildren, government clerks, construction workers, domestic workers, merchants, taxi drivers, and port laborers all lived through the same decade from different positions. Oil revenue and infrastructure gave Dubai new roads, ports, houses, schools, offices, and appliances, but the routines that held the city together remained practical: buying rice and fish, crossing the creek, receiving guests, sending wages home, repairing machines, attending school, praying, cooking, waiting for transport, and keeping family networks strong in a city changing faster than its residents could fully absorb.

References

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Pacione, Michael. "Dubai." Cities, vol. 22, no. 3, 2005, pp. 255-265.
Dubai Petroleum. Fateh Field. https://www.dubaipetroleum.ae/about-us/oil-and-gas-assets/fateh-field/