I am in Dubai. Every area of this young city is surfaced with paver stones rather than concrete or asphalt. Most places I have traveled use concrete or asphalt to cover roads, driveways, parking lots, and side walks. Dubai, on the other hand, uses paver stones for everything, including the entire port facility here. There are literally tens of billions of these pavers in use here, with more being placed daily. Right in front of my apartment a crew is paving the center divider with pavers. Asphalt would melt, so that leaves poured concrete as a likely choice.
My coworkers and I are guessing it is one of the following reasons:
Water drainage to take advantage of the itty bit of rain the city gets.
Heat cycling would would crack and destroy concrete due to the constant expansion and contraction from the extreme temperatures here.
Pavers are cheaper. A factory cranking out paver stones, flat bed trucks and a crew of low paid South Asians is cheaper than concrete poured from a mixer truck.
I am located in Qatar and working on a construction project. We have paver stones all over Doha just the same as Dubai. I don’t know the answer, but I would also guess #3.
Asphalt would not necessarily melt, but you have to get a specific quality to ensure it doesn’t.
Another reason to prefer paving stones to poured concrete is better “grip”, both for pedestrians and cars. I’ve seen places where poured concrete had pebbles in it to give it that better grip, but that’s not very good on either shoes, delicate feet or tires and it may also involve a lot of wear and tear on machinery. You can rake poured concrete to make it rugged, but again it’s not as comfortable as paving stones.
Since the real estate bubble burst and all the money vanished. The thing to remember about Dubai is that it has little oil. That sits under Abu Dhabi. Dubai is built as a modern economic miracle. When we say modern, read “other people’s money”. Its goal was to be the Singapore of the middle east. Trade, finance, tourism. There is no internal source of money. It nearly made it too. They have been bailed out by Abu Dhabi.
Even before the flight of the money, the quality of construction was not high, if not just plain poor. Everything was built to a price, and quickly, by poorly paid, inexperienced, and poorly supervised immigrant workers. Everything was built on the back on external investment, and mostly justified by the huge real estate boom, plus the promise of what would come.
Then why don’t you ask them? Seriously, they’re most likely to have the answer to your question. But you’re sitting inside posting on a message board instead?
I seriously doubt the folks putting the things down know the answer. “Why are you guys using paving stones instead of concrete or asphalt?” workers all exchange looks “Because we were told too and they pay us too?”
You’d need to talk to the guys who produced the design and made the decisions, and I doubt they will be hanging around with a crew putting down pavers.
My WAG is a combination of 3 and 4…costs and going for a unified and pleasing look.
The unskilled laborers here are paid only a few dollars a day according to a Somali taxi driver and the Syrian man who cuts my hair. It is a sad exploitation. So much excessive consumption mixed with such glaring financial inequity.
I doubt the Indian laborer in the bright coveralls and beat up shoes will know why these pavers are the ground surface of choice.
The Emirates used to belong to Great Britain and using paving stones is very common there. Most of the engineers/planers currently in Dubai are either British or trained in the UK and you go with what you know.
I’d agree with this and #3 in the OP being the real reasons. plus if the ground under them in an area sinks or is otherwise non-level, you don’t have to destroy a bunch of stuff to fix it like with concrete.
there’s one or two streets in Detroit (Marlborough is the only one I’ve seen) that is still red brick paved. And last time I went down it it was practically the smoothest road in Detroit.
In Saudi we have pavers and cement sidewalks in about equal measures. I did note a construction crew a few weeks ago tearing up brown pavers in favor of red ones.
Another question is why all the curbs are painted in alternating colors.
I think this is very unlikely to be the reason - in the UK we use paving stones for pavements (sidewalks), but not for roads, where asphalt is the almost-universal material of choice.
My guess is #2. If paving stones are cheaper than poured concrete, why aren’t they used the world over? Also, how can it be cheaper to manufacture and transport paving slabs than it is to take a lorry-load of concrete and pour it in on site?
Concrete roads buckle explosively not crack. Nobody can drive on it until the section gets cut out and replaced. Do pavers normally buckle in the heat and make the road impassible?
