Sandwiched between Jumeirah and Sheikh Zayed Road, Satwa is one of the city's most honest neighbourhoods — a grid of low-rise apartments, spare-parts shops, Indian tailors, Filipino remittance offices, and cafeterias that have been feeding workers since before the towers arrived. Al Mallah on 2nd December Street has been making shawarma since 1979 and does not think about its reputation.

Satwa has been scheduled for redevelopment for twenty years and survived by being too useful to too many people at once. The flower market, plant nurseries, Sri Lankan restaurants, and tyre shops don't have an aesthetic — they have a function. The land value is extreme; the tenants are not wealthy; the outcome has been postponed but not cancelled.