The Tower of Dubai

I don't disagree with a single thing you say.

I think Dubai has some serious struggles. But, taken on the whole, I think that it'll rebound. It has an enormous population base to draw from, in a historically unstable and oppressive region. There are roughly 100 million upper-middle to wealthy class people within a 4 hour flight from the city.

The UAE's investment in all the right renewable resources, it's tax-free haven status, relative transparency and stability, the lack of overbearing regulations, the fact that it's practically giving away corporate space in its buildings, its high tech industries, its attractiveness to high end medical research, its growing hydroponic farms and investment in desalination plants, OH, and it's "fun" appeal, means (at least to me) that within 10 years it'll be attractive to investors again.

I'm not pretending to be prescient, but I think Dubai/UAE will come out on top.

~String

 

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I wonder what will happen to Dubai if Iran gets it's shit together? I think business will move to Iran. Snow slopes in the desert? How long can that last? Hell, look at cities in Japan - even they are looking a little old. Everything has a used by date.

 

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we have water parks in the middle of cities. :shrug: I don't see what the big deal is about the snow park.

Anyways, does anyone know how many of the homes on all the man made islands are empty?
And do they serve alcohol at the Atlantis? If so, could gambling be far behind?

 

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Well, I had a chat with my friend online who has been there a few months ago. He had a different view than mine. I guess String also made some good points, and the city planners based there plans more on the upper middle/rich class than the average middle class.
Also there are lots of tax incentives for businesses to move there, so that could be a very big advantage. My friend says that they have cooled beaches where pipes under the sand cools the sand. Also because of the laws if you drop your walet on the sidewalk it is going to be there 5 hours later.

I guess then the biggest danger for Dubai is competition. I made the analogy with Las Vegas. 60 years ago there was nothing in the middle of the Nevada desert and then they started to build. There business was/is gambling just like Dubai's is business and attraction. But once the other states realized just how good of a business is gambling, they started to open casinos everywhere and novadays almost every American can find a casino in less than 4 hours away, so there is no need to go to Vegas. To counter this Vegas started to advertise again as a family attraction place...

So the same could happen to Dubai, a few hundred miles away another country can open a special territory with tax incentives and with a better climate or maybe more geographical security and there goes Dubai's advantage...

 

It was built with slave labor according to British journalists, and with U.S. taxpayer dollars, according to the record.

 

The risk factor is just too high for the development being concentrated in such a small geographical area. What is there is a huge oilspill from a tanker? That would mess up the cooled sand beaches for a few years.
What if in a military skirmish there is a little radioactive pollution? Messed up again for decades... And those are the things that are actually not unlikely and beyond their control...

 

Most interesting to look at OP picture of uninhabited sand in foreground and whoopee tower in background.

Extremely exemplified by Wright Mile High, most really tall buildings are, in my humble :bugeye: opinion, monuments to egomania.

In specific example of OP, question is aroused. With all unoccupied sand close by, why stick building up? Easy enough to put building on side on empty sand.

Easy enough to figure out. Owner egomania is not mollified by flacid building laying flat on ground. Owner ego is aroused by building sticking up longer than anybody else.

 

How did that happen?

 

Interesting as to the technical way it was built...http://www.geomarc.it/Poulos_&_Bunce_2008.pdf