On 6 February Dubai announced that it had appointed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to design a new tower for the city near to the Creek.

Property prices in the emirate have fallen over the past year, and in a region preoccupied with low oil prices and geopolitical tensions, the timing of Dubai’s decision to press ahead with yet another iconic tower may at first appear to be misguided.

The question is: Is there a good time to launch a tall tower?

The difficulty with tower projects is they take a long time to develop, which means the economic and political backdrop when they are launched is likely to have completely changed by the time they are completed.

The Burj Khalifa is a prime example. It was launched in mid-2003 when nobody expected developers in Dubai to sell large volumes of property, oil prices, like today, were about $30 a-barrel, and the region was gripped with a period of geopolitical uncertainty as a US-led coalition was invading Iraq less than two years after the 11 September terrorist attacks.

During the seven years that it took to complete the tower the city of Dubai was transformed. There was a credit-fuelled property boom with hundreds of towers constructed in new developments such as the Downtown district, Dubai Marina, Business Bay, and Jumeirah Lake Towers. The bubble then burst spectacularly in 2008 as Dubai grappled with a debt crisis that still lingers on today.

Dubai’s leadership will be quietly hoping that it is always a good time to launch a tall tower, and this new, as yet unnamed, tower will have a similar impact on the emirate’s economy as the construction of the Burj Khalifa did. Only this time it will be wise to avoid relying too heavily on debt.