In summer 2018 the Municipality of Dubai launched the Modern Heritage Initiative, intending to preserve a series of buildings from the 1970s, such as John Harris’ World Trade Center and George Rais and Jafar Tukan’s Al Khuloud Nursery School, among others. This is one of the rare occasions in which a GCC government agenda puts the word ‘heritage’ is in direct association with the architectural production of the modernization era. For decades, modernist architecture in the Gulf has been equated to the demolition of the traditional medina, with top-down plans and the gradual westernization of the country. In the second half of the 20th century, the rapid urban and social transformation has been blamed for allegedly superimposing foreign narratives to local customs, blurring the contours of the native culture. As a consequence, people and institutions have demonstrated disaffection and a low sense of belonging to the 1960s-1970s city. Today, it is not the most appealing residential/commercial location, and demolition is normally accepted as a common practice to liberate strategic central plots to attract investors and real-estate speculators. Moreover, since the local population has progressively snubbed the once-ville moderne, it has become a vital and informal gathering point for ‘other’ citizenships. However, and despite resulting in an incomplete vision, modernist architecture has been the language - for better or worse - of Gulf cities’ global aspirations. Modernism again, both in the arts and in architecture, has been instrumental in reconsidering and negotiating fluid concepts like tradition, contemporaneity and identity in relation with society and the built environment. In the last decade, a new tangible interest for these artefacts has grown stronger, as demonstrated by a variety of new studies and bottom up-initiatives. Scholarly research and publications, students' thesis topics as well as Venice Biennale participations, public debates and exhibitions, place-making campaigns and a few rehabilitation projects demonstrate a raising and compelling need to re-engage with the concrete city of the 1960s and 1970s. Now, if, as it seems, the Gulf will move towards the preservation of his recent physical past, what conservancy can be expected or envisioned? Architecture is meant to perform as a living organism in synergy with the urban environment. Given the Gulf cities’ tendencies to ‘spectacularize’ or ‘museify’ the built environment (e.g. heritage villages or history theme malls), and the wave of nostalgia perceivable especially on the social media, what can be a projected trajectory for these specific artefacts in the near future?