In case you missed last weekend's multipage ad extravaganza in the New York Times Magazine, Dubai is undergoing a huge building boom, including the construction of multiple dentrite-like islands and a new "land of opportunity" marketing tagline. According to this site, Dubai is said to have 15 to 25% of the world's cranes and the world's largest man-made islands (viewable from space).
The world's tallest hotel, Burj al-Arab hotel, is apparently considered the world's first "7 star hotel."
Then there's Hydropolis, "the world's first underwater hotel. Entirely built in Germany and then assembled in Dubai, it is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2006."
Hydropolis was cancelled and Dubai's main source of income is intended to be a finacial services center (there's a big boom in Islamic finance going right now), but they haven't been able to attract the business. anyway, hydropolis:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydropolis
Apparently Atlantis a 1/2 submerged hotel is being built though.
dubai also had something like 400 construction related deaths in 2006...compared to less than 2 dozen in the US. f*ed up considering most of the workers in dubai are essentially endentured servants.
ReplyDeleteYour mention of "conspicious consumption" caught my eye as I am getting more and more concerned about the effects it is having on our planet. But I wont write my whole rant here. Why read the book when you can see the movie? ;)
ReplyDeleteThere are so many movies about conspicious consuption... but sadly, even in environmentally friendly, tree hugging Washington state, people are still missing the point:
http://peoplegeek.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/holiday-conspicuous-consumption-rant/