Dubai Folly: Half a mile high cloud scraper (Pic heavy)

[denem]

built on slavery, debt and dust-









(My mine is bigger than yours etc.)

[denem]

1. DUFUNT - 38 seconds

Highly controversial.

[MidwestTransplant]

2. From the top, great views of the sand no doubt.

[denem]

4. And sand Storms

the place is wracked by them.

[dugaresa]

3. you could put an eye out on that!

[goldcanyonaz]

5. One place I never care to visit.

[piratefish08]

6. future pyramids.

remnants of a destroyed planet.

[MidwestTransplant]

15. Or of a destroyed civilization in any case once the the ME runs out of oil.

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. That's nothing.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-550548/Mile-high-tower-Saudi-prince-promises-5bn-desert-spire-TWICE-tall-nearest-rival-built.html

[Romulox]

8. My guess: scratch the surface and you'll find a "sovereign wealth fund" that benefited from TARP

involved with that building! :hi:

[JCMach1]

17. No, but CITI loaned Dubai 5billion just before the TARP

... Dubai is leveraged to the hilt.

[Bravo Zulu]

9. It gets hit by lightning a lot!

[denem]

10. Heh. A needle in the sky. Allah - 1, Sutlan Nil.

Great pics - thanks.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. You know what's funny?

Skyscrapers have only two reasons to exist.

1. They make efficient use of the land they occupy.

2. They self-agrandizingly memorialize the "Great Men" who had them built.

The two are not mutually exclusive, but they can each be true while the other is false.




Look at all the empty land in that picture. Look at all the empty land is this picture:

[denem]

12. Hmm. They made a real mess out of Australia

in that pool. Nofair.

[JCMach1]

13. Empty land? They built everything concentrated densely...

[Stinky The Clown]

14. The point is .....

..... there was no land use reason to build that thing.

Were it in NY or Mexico City or London or any other very dense, sprawling, city it might make sense. In Dubai, being that the city is very new, the money could have been spent on an expandable mass transit system. *That* would have made sense. But it wouldn't serve to immortalize the Great Men.

[JCMach1]

16. They spent money on mass transit too... the new Dubai Metro is world class

This building was part of the Dubai real estate bubble. It was indeed sold, many times over for sure. In recent years there was great need for housing and commercial real estate as Dubai was one of the fastest growing cities in the world. That has since slowed way down.

Shk. Mohd. of Dubai, however, leveraged the Emirate to the hilt and since the real estate crash has had trouble making credit payments on the building spree.

Despite the capitalist overreach, the building itself is beautiful.

[denem]

19. Mine is bigger than yours.

Can't see anything else here.

[TiberiusGracchus]

18. Dubai is about as genuine as Disneyland but with more slaves...

Here's an article by Independent UK columnist and HuffPo contributor Jonathan Hari on the "real" Dubai, complete with indentured servitude, sexual slavery, and vicious exploitation.