PLACEMAKING & TACTICAL URBANISM
TRULY GREAT DESTINATIONS ARE MARKED BY THEIR ABILITY TO DELIVER AUTHENTIC EXPERIENCES
RE-IMAGINING
YAS ISLAND
YAS ISLAND VISION 2030 PLACEMAKING PROGRAM
CLIENT
Miral Abu Dhabi
LOCATION
Yas Island, Abu Dhabi, UAE
PROJECT TYPE
Entertainment, Leisure, Mixed Use & Hospitality Destination
WHAT WE DELIVERED
Destination Research & Positioning
Audience & Demographic Research
Place Visioning & Site Narrative
Public Art Strategy & Tactical Design
Visitor Experience Optioneering
Wayfinding Framework
Stakeholder Engagement
Site Wide Governance Framework
PROJECT CHALLENGE
Yas Island is Abu Dhabi’s première leisure and entertainment destination with a large 25 km square footprint and multi faceted destination offer that includes hospitality, retail, sports, events and year round attractions. After careful consideration Miral appointed Creative Dialog as part of an extensive and long term engagement to develop a complete placemaking approach for the public realm of this landmark destination with the clear mandate of providing an enhanced visitor experience.
While built around a series of immensely impressive and iconic attractions such as Ferrari World, Warner Bros. World, Sea World and the Yas Marina F1 Circuit, it became clear from the outset that Yas Island as a whole functions as a collection of separate destinations. With this in mind the challenge became clear; how can we reimagine Yas Island’s future beyond being a collection of disparate fast fun attractions primarily accessed by private vehicle use?
DESTINATION DYNAMICS
Using the full breadth of our strategic advisory tools, we conducted extensive site audits and stakeholder engagement workshops to understand the island’s operational complexities and challenges along with critical client side feedback and aspirations which revealed the extent of destination’s untapped potential. This research uncovered key insights about visitor movement patterns, cultural preferences, and the missed opportunities to leverage Yas Island’s unique geography, while also getting to the core of a range of management and governance issues that the wider stakeholder group faced in managing not only the assets but the public realm and it’s infrastructure and ultimately the island itself.
Through extensive demographic and visitor research, interviews and behavioral mapping, we discovered incredible insights around how 34 million annual visitors from over 100 countries navigate and experience the destination. All of these learnings propelled our Island First – Attraction Second strategy to form the basis of what became the Yas Island Vision 2030 Placemaking Program.
Our research uncovered to two distinct things: visitation is predominately undertaken point to point from attraction to attraction by private car and that almost all visitors perceive Yas Island as being about F1 and Ferrari World. This quite well ingrained view point resulted in vast spaces of the island not being frequented or even known by the audience as well as building barriers to visitation where in many instances visitors and potential visitors felt that they could not afford to visit Yas Island.
This led to us redefining our aspirational visitor modalities from being car based to exploration based where the ethos of active lifestyle and cultural engagement sit front and center of the Yas experience. This new paradigm shift was then supported by a multitude of interventions and site programming from public art to cultural events along with the opening up of green spaces and transport routes to reposition the visitor mindset and foster easier accessibility and deeper engagement.
HOLISTIC PLACEMAKING APPROACH
Central to the strategy was breaking down the the silo effect of each attraction and extending the destination offer to include integrated multi modal transport options, underpinned by the reimagining and reprogramming of green spaces and a pedestrian first approach that resulted in a comprehensive transformation that would not only unite the island’s premium attractions but would also serve to widen the addressable audience through the adoption of a new mix of lower cost attraction types that are climate adaptive and culturally nuanced, set across a year round – island wide program of events and interventions, creating new reasons for audiences to visit, stay, explore, and return.
One of the core pillars of our approach was rather than treating individual assets in isolation, we developed a holistic vision that positioned Yas Island as a unified island destination where every element reinforces the distinctive experience of island living. This was achieved by creating numerous opportunities to see and experience the water’s edge through elevated viewpoints and water connections to promote and reinforce the sense of island. This was further embellished by providing the ability to explore the destination as an island across a seamless mobility network that included, water taxis, sky lifts, personal mobility, running, walking and cycling trails and finally ultra light rail mobility pods that all connect to one another to create the game changing Yas Leisure Trail, providing both residents and visitors exciting new ways to explore Yas Island from micro to macro.
ACTIVE LIFESTYLE TRANSFORMATION
Our island wide master planning approach prioritized active lifestyle promotion through strategic reconfiguration of vehicle-dominant spaces, while also serving as the catalyst to broaden the destination offer. This pedestrian-first philosophy guided the reimagining of three critical precincts, Yas Family Park, Yas Plaza and Yas Marina each with own unique mix of amenities and anchors.
MAJOR MOBILITY
Through our placemaking master-planning process, this year long engagement saw Creative Dialog develop an entirely new approach to the use of green spaces that are set to re-imagine the Yas Family Park experience.
This completely transformed green space is set to offer visitors easy access through a variety of mobility options including driver-less shuttles, personal mobility devices as well as an interconnected sky lift directly from Yas Plaza and its hotels all the way through to key attractions such as Warner Brothers World, Yas Mall & Ferrari World finally terminating at Yas Family Park.
YAS FAMILY PARK ACTIVATION
At the heart of this new intervention sits a large-scale biodome and conservatory that showcases both local and international species, providing climate-controlled exploration opportunities year-round while educating visitors about regional ecology.
The Adventure Park extends the family experience through an engaging walking maze and elevated sky deck that offers panoramic views across the entire island, creating Instagram-worthy moments while serving as a natural orientation point and yet another opportunity to emphasize the notion of island through the sight of near by water.
Event-ready spaces within the park supported by the Yas Island Visitor Centre enables flexible programming that supports the new Yas After Dark initiative, hosting everything from moonlight cinema screenings to weekend cultural activations that extend the park’s appeal beyond daylight hours. All of these planned interventions also provide sound economic drivers to further diversify the island’s appeal.
ALL NEW ADVENTURES
The new Yas Family Park is home to the all-new Yas Art Park, an outdoor sculpture park, along with a series of arbor pavilions and the region’s first ever large scale biodome and conservatory showcasing local and international species in an incredible purpose-built dome.
These features are further complimented by an eco-friendly visitor center and cafe along with a new lake and F&B outlets where lakeside dining adds yet another unique drawcard in the centre of the park.
YAS MIRINA WATERFRONT ENHANCEMENT
Our comprehensive intervention along the marina waterfront fundamentally reimagined the relationship between visitors and the ocean experience by opening new pedestrian plazas that prioritize walkability and water transport connection. The Wharf floating restaurant and bistro exemplifies this water-first approach, creating all new, aspirational dining experiences that literally float on the harbor while maximizing both visual and physical connections to the marina environment at the same time delivering revenue positive opportunities.
The enhanced Yas Village retail and dining precinct strengthens the overall marina appeal through curated experiences that complement rather than compete with the luxury yacht atmosphere, creating seamless transitions between shopping, dining, and waterfront leisure, activating the site beyond the annual Formula One race for which it is famous for.
Pedestrianizing this space led to a signature innovation—Abu Dhabi’s first robotic auto park topped with a rooftop restaurant and bar offering unprecedented 360-degree views of the Formula One Circuit while solving practical parking challenges through automated technology that maximizes land use efficiency and creates an unmissible dining destination for race weekends and year-round visitors alike.
Elsewhere, we developed a series of new attractions that includes Abu Dhabi’s first robotic auto park and roof top restaurant that enjoys 360 degree views of the Formula One Circuit making it a must visit destination for race weekends.
YAZ PLAZA REIMAGINED
The transformation of this previously underutilized and sun exposed dormant space demonstrates how thoughtful infrastructure design can dramatically improve public comfort and programming flexibility. Our bespoke retractable shade structures provide significantly enhanced comfort levels that enable true year-round activation, addressing the fundamental challenge of creating appealing outdoor gathering spaces in Abu Dhabi’s climate.
These flexible environmental controls support diverse programming from intimate night markets to large-scale pop-up experiences and daily fitness programs, creating a dynamic event space that adapts to both seasonal preferences and varying group sizes. The plaza’s strategic positioning creates direct integration with the island’s hospitality hub, establishing a genuine community gathering point where hotel guests, attraction visitors, and local residents can intersect naturally throughout both day and night across a wide range of programs.
The NEW YAS plaza COMPLETELY TRANSFORMS THIS SPACE INTO A DYNAMIC YEAR ROUND EVENT PLAZA THAT PLAYS A VITAL ROLE IN ACTIVATING THE HOSPTALITY HUB OF THE ISLAND.
This new activated space is where families come together to enjoy events and festivites from night markets through to pop up events and daily fitness programs in a welcoming and pleasant enviroment directly connected to the island's hospitality hub, making it one of the places to be on Yas Island day or night.
ESTABLISHING CHARACTER ZONES + PUBLIC REALM UPLIFT
Another intrinsic element of our placemaking approach was develop a flexible character zone framework that allowed for future development of the public realm including hard and softscapes ensuring that all future activations will be not only highly targeted but aligned to the overall site wide placemaking strategy.
Our transformation of the public realm directly addressed the growing consumer demand for authentic, meaningful engagement and higher levels of public amenity expected of flagship destinations. This framework led to numerous upgrade initiatives including a site wide infrastructure decluttering program, revised approaches to HVM deployment and overall urban beatification measures as public space infill projects where sidewalks and transit corridors were all given significant uplifts serving the broader Abu Dhabi community while enhancing the overall destination experience for all stakeholder groups.
ISLAND WIDE WAYFINDING UPGRADE
Another highly important aspect of the program was to ensure that visitors were provided an easy to understand and cohesive set of navigation tools from welcoming gateways to vehicular and pedestrian wayfinding across the destination with the intention of effortlessly directing visitors across the island in an intuitive and engaging way. This resulted in the planning of a comprehensive wayfinding and digital signage program for Yas Island.
The wayfinding program, when combined with the newly planned site wide transport links that connect the entire island across land and water as whole, enables island wide visitor planning and exploration that can be undertaken as either micro or macro journeys, creating a much easier way for visitors to consume the island’s many attractions and features.
This project was delivered as a part of our strategic advisory services.