

Urbanization of Dubai - kumarski
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/dubai.php

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derda
I'd love to see pictures like that for the whole of Dubai. These only show
about maybe 1/3 of the actual city. But still impressive. I went there a few
months ago and the only thing I can describe it with is "Playing Sim City with
money cheat".

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return0
Hmm, that's not urbanization that's construction. A large number of these
buildings are empty, and too expensive for immigrants to rent (let alone buy).

Also, building glass boxes in the scorching desert heat does not make good
environmental sense. They should be building more of this:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE-wHF5zf0k>

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bofh69
Its impressive what you can build with a huge amount of slaves.

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johnyzee
Sent from your iPhone

~~~
illuminate
Not crafted by guest workers.

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minhajuddin
You have to give credit to Sheik Mohammed for what he has accomplished. Dubai
is not like other arab countries which get money from petrol. It built itself
into a city which everyone in the world knows, that too in a very short span
of time.

~~~
mun2mun
I would have praised him if he have made universities that are on par with
Stanford, MIT (which would have cost 1/10th of cost of current development).
They have seen shinny Vagus but failed to see why they shine.

~~~
mseebach
Regrettably, there's more to great universities than throwing money at it.
It's important to remember that the country has no educational history. 50
years ago the few inhabitants there were barely literate, and few of those who
could read had ever read anything but the Quran.

That said, Abu Dhabi is actually trying to do just that. They're buying off
entire departments of western universities, offering generous research grants
if the department is relocated to Abu Dhabi. The idea is to bootstrap a
tradition of higher education.

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theklub
Didn't someone say we should build a city in the desert before we build one on
mars?

I think we can check it off the list..

~~~
simba-hiiipower
speaking of the desert, anyone know how dubai has managed water access through
all this growth?

i know many countries in the region (namely kuwait and saudi) utilize
desalinization on a large scale, though i’ve heard it's only economically
viable where oil is extremely cheap and abundant, which (as far as i know) is
not the case in dubai..

seems like the environment would lend itself well to nuclear (a lot of barren,
uninhabited, seemingly geologically stable, space), which i'd imagine could
fuel desalinization plants just fine.

~~~
mseebach
They desalinate like there's no tomorrow. Like so many other things there,
it's insanely expensive, but they do it anyway.

UAE is also enroute to building its first nuclear power plant, but it's not
what's powering desalination at this point.

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dragonbonheur
And they still have no sewage system...

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lipnitsk
I don't think this is true anymore. According to this article, Dubai now has a
sewage system covering the entire city:
[http://p4papyrus.blogspot.ca/2011/02/sewage-system-now-
cover...](http://p4papyrus.blogspot.ca/2011/02/sewage-system-now-covers-
entire-dubai.html)

~~~
benzofuran
As a former resident and that I still go through quite often, some limited
high-end parts of the city have central sewage but the broad majority of
sewage is still trucked from individual buildings to the treatment plants.

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andrewcooke
does it make sense to develop an entire new city on shoreline when we face
rises in sea-levels?

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wtvanhest
I don't know about you, but I want to live on the water now, while I am still
alive. I am not worried about who lives in the house that is flooded in 100
years.

~~~
andrewcooke
yes. people like me worry about people like you.

~~~
potatolicious
Unless the city is being built on already flood-prone marshland (which is a
dumb idea even right now), the timeline for it becoming inundated is on the
order of 200-300+ years.

The historical lifetime of residential buildings rarely exceeds even 100 years
- with notable exceptions only.

How far ahead do you think we should be considering when building? 100 years?
300? 500? 1000? The Earth is not static, and practically all land that we
stand on today will become dramatically different at some (probably distant)
point in the future.

Cities rise and fall faster than the climate changes around them - even when
accounting for man-made climate change. Cities are also organic, continually
redeveloping - with portions of it becoming disused and broken, while
previously disused parts become revitalized.

Considering the timescales we're looking at, the _natural lifespan_ of most
coastal buildings would be considerably less than the encroaching waters, and
_more_ than enough time for cities to organically grow away from them.

So wtvanhest's position seems sensible. There is really no reason to not live
on the coastline today.

~~~
Someone
I would think twice before buying coastline property in Dubai. Large parts of
Dubai's beaches are man-made and may last a lot shorter than that 100 years
you consider safe
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_(archipelago)#Project...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_\(archipelago\)#Project_difficulties))

Also, a house that is known to last only 100 years will be harder to sell in
50 years time, so forget about the pension investment benefit of buying such a
house (yes, that should affect current house prices, but I think humans in
general do not understand long time horizons that well)

Back to the subject proper: Dubai is gambling that they can become a Vegas and
keep making money that way. That bet may pay out, but it is not a bet I would
make. Problem is that there is no middle way here. Sure, if their income will
be half what they expect it to be, they can kick foreigners out to keep the
$/capita at decent levels, but what would they do with all those houses than?
Demolish? Huge loss of money. Keep around? Even larger loss because of
maintenance costs. Turn into a ghost town? That might become a tourist
attraction.

Also, Vegas has survived so long by consuming the water from the Colorado
river, but that is not sustainable. I expect huge problems in Vegas within 20
years. Dubai starts in the 'no water' position. But hey, I am not an
economist, so don't take my word for it.

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rorrr
When the oil runs out (or alternatives become cheaper), this will be a ghost
town. Heck, the whole country will collapse. No more oil, no more slave
workers.

Can't wait.

~~~
saljam
Really? Of all the gulf nations, the UAE seems tome to be the most prepared to
survive after oil, specifically because of Dubai.

Now, it's not my favourite city, but I don't understand all the hate towards
it. They've got a lot of oil money that's not going to last and they need to
pivot to something else. Dubai is their attempt.

~~~
rorrr
Dubai is not self sustaining, it needs a lot of money to run. It's a bunch of
half-empty skyscrapers in the desert. They need to be air conditioned, water
needs to be delivered and/or desalinated, sewage needs to be taken for
processing by trucks.

I would understand if they built something useful, something high-tech, like a
CPU factory or some biotech stem cell research city. Instead they went for a
caricature of Las Vegas, but with all kinds of laws against what normally is
considered fun.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/04/dubai-kissing-
coupl...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/04/dubai-kissing-couple-
jail_n_524736.html)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512815/Briton-
jailed...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-512815/Briton-jailed-years-
Dubai-customs-cannabis-weighing-grain-sugar-shoe.html)

[http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-12-06/news/35654144_1_d...](http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-12-06/news/35654144_1_dubai-
police-iranian-men-three-men)

[http://www.nairaland.com/175589/russian-woman-arrested-
dubai...](http://www.nairaland.com/175589/russian-woman-arrested-dubai-
drinking)

~~~
mseebach
Best prepared to survive != currently self sustaining.

Of all the ME petrostates, UAE is by a long shot and then some the most
liberal and has the most diversified economy. It's also moving the fastest
towards becoming more liberal and getting a more diversified economy.

The kicker here, of course, is the meaning of being the most liberal "of all
the ME petrostates" - the bar is not very high. That said, if you're married,
western, well-paid, can keep your hands off your partner in public, don't
routinely get obscenely drunk and don't do drugs (many, many people fall into
this bucket without giving up any quality of life), you could find much worse
places to live.

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potatolicious
> _"can keep your hands off your partner in public, don't routinely get
> obscenely drunk and don't do drugs (many, many people fall into this bucket
> without giving up any quality of life)"_

In my experience, the number of people who _actually_ live this lifestyle
without giving up any quality of life is a far, far, far smaller number than
the number of people who _apparently_ live this lifestyle without giving up
any quality of life.

The greatest myth of modern Western society is that freaks are actually
uncommon.

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mseebach
I didn't say that you can't be a freak. The list I made is actually quite
exhaustive (OK, add "don't criticize the royal family and/or islam" and "don't
proselyte").

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milliams
I can't look at Dubai the same since playing Spec Ops: The Line.

