Four-thousand-foot-tall skyscrapers, a theme park three times the size of Walt Disney World in Florida, palm-tree-shaped man-made islands built up from the sea to house hundreds of thousands of people, the world's largest indoor skiing slope, and a subway system that can run every 90 seconds...automatically.
Meet Dubai.
Come on, don’t be shy.
Okay, the last few of weeks of my life—after stressing out and working feverishly on my second book, which is apparently called Fat Hoochie Prom Queen and will be out next spring (worship my oh-so-subtle pluggetry!)—I’ve had a chance to finally breathe a sigh of relief and relax. And I’ve been sort of pandering to my inner city-planner/architecture dork, and reading all over the place about the craziness that is Dubai. And why I totally have to go there in a decade or so.
I won’t go into its history (even though it’s a relatively short one—the city’s only really been around since the earlyish 1800s), but it’s interesting to note that it’s the largest city in the United Arab Emirates—a small country at the end of Saudi Arabia, on the Persian Gulf—and has around 1.5 million people.
That’s about as many people as live in Philadelphia.
And, okay, no offense to Philly—who’s pretty much known for an old bell with a crack in it, cheese-steak sandwiches, Rocky, and (at least according to me and my friend Nick) really hot guys on South Street—but you SUCK in comparison to this amazingly ridiculous city.
The first reason I want to visit Dubai in the near future is this.
The Burj Dubai is currently over 1,600 feet tall, making it taller than the tallest building in the world (Taipei 101 in Taiwan), and way taller than anything in the U.S. By the time they're finished constructing it in 2009 or so, it will stand at a suspected height of 2,600 to 3,300 feet.
To give you an idea of how tall that is, the Empire State Building is only around 1,250 feet tall. Yeah. Burj Dubai is gonna be way cooler. And I'll BET there won't be anything as lame as a Walgreen's in its lobby.
I said "suspected height," because another reason I want to visit Dubai, the Al Burj, is set to be under construction soon, and it is rumored to planned to be even taller than Burj Dubai.
How much taller?
Um...3,937 feet tall—or roughly THREE Empire State Buildings.
Can we just say ridic?
So, yeah. I've always been a huge skyscraper dork. I don't know what it was. But suddenly, when I was around 10 years old, it just clicked in me that I LOVED these things. But believe it or not, I'm not going to fly halfway around the world just to hit up an observatory nearly a mile in the sky. There's gonna be way more reason to visit than just a couple of super-tall structures.
Actually, now might be a good time to say briefly why Dubai is undergoing such rapid growth and building such otherworldly iconic structures. Despite the fact that only 3% of Dubai's economy comes from oil and natural gas (contrary to what most people assume would be the case with a Persian Gulf nation), that's not the story with the rest of the small Arab nation. A decent amount of the UAE's wealth comes from oil and such...but Dubai seems to be getting ready for the future.
With the world oil supply about to dry out in the next few decades (oh, yeah—it's happening), Dubai is preparing for their economic future by building a whole new class of tourist destinations.
I mean, why not? They have the money now, they have endless sunshine, they have beaches—and they have room to grow. And the innovation to build some of the coolest shit the planet's ever seen.
How about Hydropolis? The $7,000-a-night underwater hotel.
It's even gonna have a "cosmetic surgery clinic"! Hell, if I'm paying $7K a night, I might as well get a little botox, too, right? Plus, it's gonna be 2020, and who knows how rough I'm gonna look?
After a little nip/tuck, I guess I can show myself as the proud native Orlandoan that I am when I go to Dubailand. Lord knows I'm gonna have to look good there, since—at 70 square miles—it's gonna be 3X the size of Disney. And like Disney—but unlike Disney, in ways—it's going to be sort of its own city.
Now, the city that Disney technically comprises—Lake Buena Vista, FL— has around 25 permanent residents. Not Dubailand.
Dubailand will be mostly completed by 2020—theme parks, condos, apartments, hotels, resorts, malls, and all—and will be separated into themed zones, or "Worlds." There's:
-Attractions and Entertainment World
-Leisure and Vacation World
-Retail and Entertainment World
-Downtown
-Eco-Tourism World
-Sports and Outdoor World
One of my favorite proposed hotels is the Las Vegas-style Asian-themed hotel. It's kind of like the "New York, New York" hotel in Vegas—the one with all the scaled-down NY landmarks in it.
Well, what I love about the Asia hotel is that they just use modern skyscrapers as the Asian landmarks. From left to right are replicas of Taipei 101 in Taipei (which was the world's tallest building until the Burj Dubai went up past the 1,600-foot mark), the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, the Burj Dubai, the Bank of China Building in Hong Kong, and the Pearl TV Tower in Shanghai. Cute, huh?
As if that's not enough to see and do in Dubai, I'd kinda like to check out the new biggest mall in the world, the Dubai Mall, which will also hold the world's largest aquarium! Okay, I know this is a lot of "world's largest"s, but that's sort of the point, isn't it?
Well, so is "world's craziest," apparently. Because this is ridiculous. The World is located just offshore of Dubai, and will be linked to the mainland by boat and helicopter only. It is a collection of 300 man-made islands, made mostly of dredged-up sand, that form an image of the globe. The average price of a private island—which vary in size and can be used for private villas, resorts, commercial areas, golf courses, etc...pretty much anything!—is around $25 million. Apparently, it's been confirmed that an Irish company has bought the Ireland island, and plans on developing an Irish-themed resort on it.
Hmm. An Irish-themed resort on a luxurious private island in the middle of the 110+ degree Persian Gulf. I wonder how they'll get that across. I guess you give 'em enough Guinness and they won't care!
Definitely check out this video, and visit The World's Web site to see renderings of what some of the individual islands are gonna look like. You won't be sorry you did.
So, it's only been RUMORED that David Beckham has invested in The World, but we do know that he owns a villa on the nearby Palm Jumeirah.
The Palm Jumeirah is actually the smallest of three planned dredged-up Islands, called the Palm Islands.
The Palm Jumeirah is located between the two larger developments to come by 2015—the Palm Deira on the right and the Palm Jebel Ali on the left. Jumeirah was originally conceptualized to solve the problem of Dubai's beach shortage, but has evolved into something even nuttier.
The central island—or the Trunk of the Palm, if you will—is the main hub of the Jumeirah. The Trunk will consist residential, hotel, and commercial developments, and will be connected to the mainland by Gateway Bridge and a freakin' monorail! The Trunk will also feature Trump's Dubai hotel, which of course gets its own monorail stop.
The Palm Jumeirah's 17 Fronds will be chiefly residential. The top tip of the Fronds will be connected to the third component of the Jumeirah—The Crescent—by the Sub-Sea Tunnel. The Crescent, which is the long island encircling the Trunk and Fronds of the Palm Jumeirah, will add miles of coastline and beaches to Dubai, and will be home to some of the most exclusive resorts in the world, including a new Atlantis, which is under construction now. The monorail will also reach up to the Atlantis on the Crescent.
The Palm Deira, the newest development, has begun initial dredging, and is the palm-frond island collection to the right of the Palm Jumeirah in that picture from earlier. It's planned to be far larger than the Jumeriah, and have 40 residential Fronds rather than Jumeirah's measly 17.
The Palm Jebel Ali, the middle-sized Palm island, will be about the same as the other two Palm developments, but will focus a bit more on entertainment, complete with marinas and a water park thrown into the mix.
Too many Palms?
Well, you can watch this for a (very) brief rundown of the Three Palms, which inevitably leads up to the next big project to rise up from the water—Dubai Waterfront.
As you can see in the video (if you watched it), Dubai Waterfront is going to be a HUGE development (7X the size of Manhattan, with upwards of 400,000 residents) of man-made islands and canals, anchored by the usual: hotels, residences, recreational areas, Downtown business district, etc....and the 4,000-foot-tall Al Burj tower I mentioned earlier.
*an underwater hotel,
*Dubailand, in all its bigger-than-Disney glory,
*skyscrapers that seem to defy the very laws of physics, and
*huge, man-made islands that are all basically their own CITIES
would be enough. But there's actually a little more.
I'm sorry.
Bear with me.
This stuff makes me salivate, seriously.
Dubai Business Bay is an extension of the actual original Downtown Dubai, along an expanded and extended Dubai Canal. Basically, they're extending this canal farther into Downtown Dubai, then opening it up for more waterfront development...with no height restrictions. Around 230 towers are expected to be built.
Left: The Dancing Towers. The Business Bay centerpiece—one hotel, one condo, one office tower. ¡Bailamos!
Right: Aedas, where I can totally see myself at this pool sippin' a marg...or the Arab equivalent, if there is one.
From left to right: Infinity Tower (view 1); Infinity Tower (view 2); One Business Bay; Burj Al Alam; One Central Park (Look at that— effing look at that! Okay, Nico—just concentrate on your breathing....)
And, to round it out, four more random proposed towers for Business Bay Dubai...
And I might as well show you a few more random towers going up throughout Dubai that I'm very excited about. They just look so incredible!
Rotating Skyscraper Each of the 68 floors, powered by solar power and wind turbines, will be able to rotate independently of one another—a full revolution takes around 90 minutes. And an interesting twist: whoever owns the floor controls the floor. You can wake up to the sunrise and go to sleep facing the sunset. Well, if you have the money....
Dubai Towers
Real buildings have CURVES, baby! Why can't amazing things like this be built here in the shitty ol' U.S. of A.?! That old rectangular-based model for skyscrapers is so last season...or century, really.
The Lighthouse
This is another really interesting tower that's gonna generate power through photovoltaic panels (whatever those are) and wind turbines. To read more technical stuff on this (that I don't want to distill), go here. There are also a few more renderings on that page, which are all very nice to look at.
All right.
I hope I haven't lost you. If you're still reading this, then you probably find all this stuff as fascinating as I do. But it's not all underwater "10-star" hotels and man-made islands and gargantuan skyscrapers. Dubai is also thinking ahead, realizing that in developing such a massive city, they'll need to invest in transportation infrastructure. Traffic even now—with only 1.5 million residents and the vast majority of these projects not very close to being finished—is horrendous in Dubai, so along with all this new development, public transport is being planned out.
And this isn't some lame-ass cheap-o trolley system or something like that. They're doin' it, and doin' it, and doin' it right.
The first two lines of the Dubai Metro, under construction now, will be completed in 2010. All trains and 57 stations will be fully air-conditioned. The trains will be driverless and automated, with a separate car for women and children, and a first-class car as well.
In addition to these two metro lines, which primarily serve the mainland, seven monorail lines will feed into the system. These lines will most likely be constructed at the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Deira, Dubai Waterfront, Dubai Festival City, Dubai Financial Center, City of Arabia (at Dubailand), and one exclusively for the soon-to-be-finished world's tallest Burj Dubai, which is expected to house 30,000 families and receive 30 million visitors a year. I think that earns the Burj Dubai complex its own monorail line, don't you?
And if Dubai wants to become the world's premiere tourist destination for the 21st century—what with the gigantic Dubailand, world-class resorts, exclusive buildings, and the fact that Dubai is almost perfectly central to Europe and East Asia—they're gonna need a bigger airport. So I might as well mention the fact that by 2017, Dubai will have its second international airport, the Dubai World Central International Airport. Fun fact on that one—it will have the capacity to process 120 million passengers a year...50% more than the capacity of Atlanta's airport, which is one of the world's current busiest. It will also have the world's largest parking facility, with space for 100,000 cars.
So, those are the reasons I'm really wanting to visit Dubai around 2020.
I mean, sure—Dubai has its downsides. Who knows how well all these man-made islands will hold up? I mean, they obviously know what they're doing for the most part, but I read about some construction problems on the Palm Jumeirah islands already. What's gonna happen when they plunk a 4,000-foot building on reclaimed land?
And also, who knows if all these projects will come to fruition? Construction is rampant right now (15 to 25% of the world's cranes are currently in Dubai), but can such a small city really fill so many buildings? Maybe. Maybe not.
Dubai is also, after all, an Islamic nation. My main issue here is...erm...alcohol. Apparently, current laws only allow one to purchase booze in the duty-free shops and clubs (I think) and at hotel bars, and even at hotel bars, you're supposed to be a guest to drink there. Unless you have a liquor license. Which you can only get if you're a non-Muslim resident of Dubai. Even then, it's some sort of card that records every alcohol purchase, and you can only spend a certain percentage of your salary.
Um. Fuck. That.
Know what else? Homosexuality (and adultery, for that matter) is still against the law there. Not like things are soooo much better here, but there are apparently fairly frequent raids on gay-friendly bars in the city. And a raid of a gay wedding made headlines when some of the 26 men arrested were subjected to receiving male-hormone treatment, as well as jail time and lashings. Totally fucked up. But despite this, Dubai is actually one of the more accepting environments in the Middle East for homosexuality.
It'd have to be.
Who's gonna decorate all those fabulous new hotels and condos, after all?!
(I'm sorry—I had to say it.)
But maybe they'll relax the rules a bit as more and more of us booze-lovin' Anglo-mosexuals start flying into that fancy new airport. After all, if they're gonna try to edge out Orlando as #1 Tourist Spot in the world, they might have to bend their rules a bit. I for one would like to see a Parliament House-style gay hotel-slash-resort on one of the World islands. Like maybe right on Texas, just as a big screw-you. Haha!
Um. Kidding. (I hope I didn't blow my chances of ever being let into the UAE there....)
Dubai has also been under attack lately for its treatment of its construction workers (the vast majority of whom are South Asian immigrants), who work in 110-degree heat for as little as $1 a day. Improvements are on the way, however, and TheNew York Times has a very thorough report on the Dubai labor situation.
Aside from the uncomfortable laws and labor disputes, I am truly in awe of this city. They're changing the way the world thinks about urban planning and architecture—they're not afraid to break rules and conventions, which I respect and respond to. In fact, it seems that Dubai—and other Middle East cities—are actually redefining what cities and buildings are all about.
King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia is a city being built literally from the ground up—residential, business, industrial, and educational zones, a seaport, resorts, beaches and all! Projected population figures are upwards of 2 million. (It's almost like setting up an entire metropolis in Sim City on pause, and then clicking and watching how it grows!)
Kuwait City, too, has high hopes for itself, with proposals on the table for Mubarak al-Kabir Tower, which will be over 3,000 feet tall, the centerpiece of a massive $80 billion development called the City of Silk.
But back to Dubai—I do wonder what kind of city it will actually feel like, once it's all built up. It's definitely not like anywhere I've ever experienced. No city I've been to has gone through such an intense boom on such a grand, global, technological scale—and now that I think about it, Dubai is pretty much its own animal in that respect. So I wonder: Will it be a pedestrian-friendly city? Will there be street life, or because of the nature of the developments (and the fact that it can get up to 118 degrees in the summer), will most social life be confined to the various malls, lobbies, and indoor recreational areas? Like these places:
Will there be Fundamentalist Islamic backlash against such a superficially Western culture? Will enough people actually visit the area to make all this gambling worth it? (Because really, Dubai is being very ballsy here.) Will Disney try to build up a park in the desert, too, to compete with Dubailand? Would the UAE let them?!
