In urban planning, governments usually hold the decision-making power to shape not only city landscapes but also people's lives with the promoted goals of social welfare. Although states expect their own version of ideal scenarios in mind when carrying out infrastructural developments, after competition, people in reality have their own ways of perceiving and utilizing state-made infrastructures and urban transportation, sometimes in alignment with government plan, and sometimes at odds with it. Abu Dhabi is one of the cities in the world in which the government planned out the whole city and created urban infrastructure from scratch, including the city bus system. Although the Abu Dhabi public buses started operating in 2008, car dependency is still high and many residents consider public buses to be inefficient and time consuming and only used by certain immigrant working population.

Through quantitative and qualitative methods, this poster analyzes the Department of Transport (DoT)'s initial goals of establishing the public bus system, the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the currently implemented bus system, and real users’ experiences and social meanings of public transport in Abu Dhabi. The paper will argue that while the DoT constructed the urban transportation system to facilitate economic activities and comply to the idealized version of modernity, the public buses reinforce social stratification and their inefficiency and low cost-effectiveness push people to find strategic ways to navigate the city that challenge or even subvert the intentions of the DoT. By looking at a specific case of Abu Dhabi's public bus system, this paper strives to provide a better interface of government-led urban design and the actual practice of the residents in terms of urban planning and transport infrastructure, commonly practiced and constructed on a global level.