What Oil Money Buys in Dubai

[andyfox]

Corwn Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum drives a Mercedes G550 SUV with the license plate "1." He writes poetry. In order to expand limited beachfront in Dubai, artificial islands are built in the shape of Palm trees. The second Palm development will be surrounded by an outer ring of luxury villas, built on stilts over the water. Seen from above, these homes will take the shape of Arabic letters, spelling out two lines of the Sheikh's poetry, which can be read from 10,000 feet in the air.

Much of the development in Dubai is done by the company Emaar, valued this spring at $25,000,000,000. In Dubai, it is erecting the world's tallest building; also the world's largest shopping mall; and, also, within it, the world's largest aquarium. The tall building will have an Armani-run hotel on it's lower floors, one hundred and twelve floors of apartments above that, and then, fifty or so floors of office space above that. The long-established American architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill has designed the building, a slender and silvery tower formed of a three-pronged base, with elliptical cylinders rising in an ascending spiral around a central core to a height of perhaps half a mile. The exact height is being kept secret.

Dubailand is also coming. It is a $5,000,000,000 development that will be three times the size of Manhattan. It will include more than two hundred development zones, including Eco-Tourism World, Sports & Outdoor World, Auction World, Virtual Games World, and Themed Leisure & Vacation World, which features life-size replicas of the Taj Mahal and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

There is also a new develpment that will feature islands created to replicate a mosaic map of the world. It is planned as an archipelago of three hundred islands, each the size of several city blocks.

The founder and chairman of the development company, Emaar, is Mohamed Ali Alabbar. He grew up in a home that had neither electricity nor runing water. His father could not (and still cannot) read or write.

650,000 Briish tourists visited the U.A.E. last year. The Burj Al Arab is a sail-shaped luxury hotel, whose standard room--a duplex with a mirror on the bedroom ceiling--costs about $1,000 a night. If you like, you can take a helicopter from the airport to the hotel. It takes five minutes and costs $3,300.

Las Vegas meets Singapore meets . . . the future?