This presentation examines the emergence of the category of “the citizen” ­­- al-muwatin – in the United Arab Emirates over the course of the federation’s first decade, from 1971 to 1980. This was a period of massive spatial transformation, as roads, new housing, electricity, and other modern infrastructure was extended to much of the UAE’s territory and urban streetscapes were transformed as workers from the Indian Ocean region and larger Middle East became the demographic majority in the Gulf. The presentation moves between different spatial scales – local, regional, and global – to challenge the prevailing understanding of citizenship as primarily a legal status. Instead, this presentation frames citizenship as an active engagement with state and society, shaped by the experience of rapid modernization and transformation of space. With a few exceptions, Arabic-language newspapers have only rarely been used in Gulf scholarship. Using the state-sponsored al-Ittihad newspaper (published in Abu Dhabi and distributed throughout the UAE), particularly its letters to the editor and feature-length investigative articles, the presentation analyzes how citizens responded to newly-built modern infrastructures. While the usual image of UAE (and to a lesser extent other Gulf states) citizens is that of political quiescence, these sources show how citizens actively asserted their right to critique and criticize the transformations they were experiencing. Recurrent themes included inflation, shoddy construction, unequal distribution of wealth, control of public space, and the challenges posed by newly widespread automobility such as car accidents, traffic jams, and petrol distribution. At the same time, these letters and articles show the limits of critique within the UAE system, as they shied away from issues of state security, defense, and foreign policy. By the end of the decade, the critiques of ordinary citizens and elites of a pan-Arabist bent coalesced into a movement for a more centralized and effective state apparatus, more equal distribution of wealth, and greater national unity. In short, these activists had begun to imagine the UAE as a unified, homogenous nation-state. These demands, as well as counter-demands, were expressed in public demonstrations and marches as well as memoranda published on the front pages of newspapers. The newspaper was thus a critical vehicle for the formation of UAE citizen subjectivities in a time of large-scale transformations.