How does a city that is perpetually mired in debt continue not only to expand but to expand in ways that make the rest of the world’s great cities look like provincial backwaters?
When oil was trading at 100 dollars a barrel and up you could see the logic. Maybe. But with the current oil crash showing no signs of ending anytime soon you have to wonder, where is the money coming from?
Sure, you can see the need for a hub in that part of the world, a city-state for global corporations doing business with the wealthy oil monarchies of the Gulf and an international airport for flights connecting from Europe to points farther east.
But that doesn’t quite explain Dubai.
As I wrote in 2008:
Why is so much money being taken from places like Louisiana and sent to places like Dubai and Qatar? Why are these astonishing metropolises being built in these ancient lands, but not in other oil-producing countries? Are these new science fiction metropolises being prepared for someone?
I couldn’t help but think of that nutty, zany, totally off-the-wall speculation when I read about this in the news– a new domed city to open within the city of Dubai itself.
The 18-million square-foot hyper-purified, climate-controlled bubble will be comprised of residential, office, hospitality and entertainment. You can live, work and play without ever leaving the dome!
There will be nearly 300 individual buildings, 33 networked roads, 1,641.496 square-feet of walkways and plazas, artificial waterways, bike routes, bus routes, metro train stations and gondola rides. It will also house the world’s largest indoor theme park...(t)he only things missing seem to be fog, rain and sandstorms.
Catering to tourists, 20,000 hotel rooms will be available. It is estimated that 180 million visitors will be hosted annually.
Hmmm.
Now take another look at that image of Dubai at the top of the page. Then look at this image.
That is Dubai in 1990. That’s a little over 25 years ago. If that doesn’t astonish you, it should.
This is a city that went from a backwater outpost in the middle of nowhere to perhaps the most impressive cityscape in the history of the planet, complete with elaborate artificial islands and architectural showpieces decades ahead of anything you’ll see in Manhattan or Chicago.
In a quarter-century’s time. If you can name a precedent for that, I’d like to hear it.
AGAIN; WHY DUBAI?
They don’t have any resources, but they keep building. They’re deep in debt, but they keep building. Their existing spaces are filled with vacancies, but they keep building, even with the price of oil in free-fall, an economic condition that is playing havoc on countries as diverse as Canada and Venezuela.
The oceans are full of oil tankers looking to unload and now Iran is pumping again. The market is flooded and yet Dubai- ostensibly a hub for the petrochemical industry- keeps building.
Somehow they keep finding the money:The Persian Gulf sheikhdom had loaded up on billions of dollars debt during the last decade in a race to diversify its economy which unlike many of its neighbours isn’t dependent on oil.
The strategy came unstuck in late 2009 when the emirate shocked the markets when it announced it needed to freeze $26bn of debt…Eventually Dubai was able to borrow from Abu Dhabi, its wealthy partner in the United Arab Emirates…
It looked like Dubai was out of the woods and the economy well on the way to recovery until late last year when the price of oil started to plummet. Although the port city has little crude of its own its mercantile economy depends to a large extent on the wealth and economic activity that is created around in Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
And here were see the ostensible explanation for Dubai. Or at least the ostensible explanation for a city to be used as transport and business hub for the southern Persian Gulf.
I don’t know if it explains Dubai.
These energy superpowers create the economic activity which sustains Dubai and its large service economic which rests on the industrial port of Jebel Ali and the emirate’s position as a transport hub.
When oil is trading at $100 per barrel this model works well. International companies base more of their employees in Dubai and this in turn creates demand for real estate and services such as banking and leisure.
However, with oil now trading at around $50 per barrel and some forecasters warning that crude may even drop to levels much lower Dubai’s economy is once again looking extremely fragile.
‘Fragile’. That was at $50 a barrel. And Dubai was deep in debt even when oil was $100 a barrel.
Oil is now far below that and forecasters are predicting trouble for many of the rich oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia. But the problem is that demand is falling, in large part to the economic slowdown in China, the world’s top consumer of commodities. Not only are oil-producing countries feeling the pain, but also countries whose economies rely on exports of lumber, minerals, and other raw materials.
Despite a 10% spike in the price of crude last week, it remains near multiyear lows, often as low as $30. The price of crude has a 52-week low of $26.05 and 52-week high of $65.69. Despite rumors OPEC many tighten supply, Saudi Arabia continues to pump at or near capacity. Demand is slack worldwide, to some degree because of the slowdown in the Chinese economy.
And with the oil market in free fall, Dubai’s own economy has felt the pinch. Not only are its gleaming office towers filled with vacancies, not only are real estate firms going bankrupt, many business owners are deciding it’s more advantageous to simply skip town than deal with the economic headaches bedeviling the city-state:
Dubai’s slowing economy, the rout in commodities and strict debt repayment laws are reviving a phenomenon that symbolized the emirate’s crash in 2009: “skips,” or business owners who quietly leave the country to avoid punishment for defaulting on loans.
“These skips are a reminder of what happened after the financial stress Dubai went through in 2009,” Philippe Dauba-Pantanacce, an emerging market economist at Standard Chartered Plc in London, said by e-mail.
In 2014, Dubai International took the crown of “World’s Busiest Airport” from London Heathrow International.
More than 70.4 million international passengers moved through the Dubai’s ornate concourses, terminals, and duty-free shops in 2014, up 6.1% from 2013.
There’s an important caveat here:
And for what it’s worth, the contest between Dubai and Heathrow is over the title for busiest international hub. If you want to talk about the flat-out busiest airport period, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson hold the crown from most passenger traffic.
You want to hear a really wacky coincidence? I mean, here’s this city-state that I’ve been watching for years now, who pulled off this incredible
I mean, why not, right? Why not spent millions of dollars for an elaborate display that could only be seen from space for the opening of a hotel?
Happens all the time.Did I mention palms were of the Phoenix genus? And that this hotel was called the Atlantis? And that the whole theme of this spectacular was Atlantis rising again?
Well, as it happens Dubai first announced the plans for this domed city of theirs the first week of July in 2014.
Leaders of the wealthy Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai announced this week that they will soon start construction of the planet’s first domed city. The concept of a fully enclosed, climate-controlled city — sometimes called an arcology — has been a recurring theme in science fiction for more than 100 years.
Check into “Another World”
And as sheer, dumb, random luck would have it, it turns that the discovery of Planet X, or Planet 9, or Nibiru or whatever you want to call it preceded the dome city’s announcement only by a matter of weeks.
“Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,” said Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. “For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the Solar System’s planetary census is incomplete.”
Ain’t that just the zaniest, nuttiest, kookiest coincidence you ever did hear? I mean, what did I say in 2008 again? “Are these new science fiction metropolises being prepared for someone?”
What did they just say about the new domed city in Dubai? “Hyper-purified, climate-controlled. You can live without ever leaving the dome.”
Hmm.
Berossus told of a figure named Oannes, who made his home in the Persian Gulf and came ashore every day to instruct mankind in the arts of civilization. This is one of those episodes in the historical record when something completely insane is recounted entirely soberly, as if it were long accepted as truth. But to our eyes Oannes, who is often identified with the Philistine god Dagon, can only be described as “alien.”
At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of various nations, who inhabited Chaldæa, and lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythræan sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute of reason, by name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail.
This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences, and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge…in short, he instructed them in every thing which could tend to soften manners and humanize their lives…And when the sun had set, this Being Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep; for he was amphibious.
As sheer dumb luck would have it, the Phoenicians were also believed to have emerged from this same area.
Now the zany, goofball, flaky coincidence is that during that multimillion dollar hotel opening (the Atlantis, not to be confused with the resort in the Bahamas)–that climaxed with that display that you couldn’t see unless you were in the sky— we not only saw a bunch of musclemen dressed as Horus (seriously) we also saw this woman on the right, dressed in garb that wouldn’t seem out of place in a temple of Oannes, with stylized scales on her dress and a giant eye on her headpiece.
Please, just watch the whole thing for yourself- words fail me.
‘What first principles?’, you may ask. Well, ust recently several people were living inside a dome in preparation for doing so on Mars, which is to say an alien environment. Or more precisely they were recreating the environment of their own planet in an enclosed space to prepare to do so on the Red Planet.
OK, but what does that have to do with Dubai?
The plans for the Dubai dome- by sheer dint of coincidence- call for an infrastructure that could be very easily repurposed to recreate an alien environment, if the need ever arose.
Like it says, “A hyper-purified, climate-controlled bubble.”
How utterly fascinating then that these plans were first announced mere weeks after the first solid evidence of a major planet outside the orbit of Pluto was also (publicly) discovered.
What an incredible coincidence. If you believe in coincidence, that is.
Again, what did I ask, almost eight years ago?
Why is so much money being taken from places like Louisiana and sent to places like Dubai and Qatar? Why are these astonishing metropolises being built in these ancient lands, but not in other oil-producing countries? Are these new science fiction metropolises being prepared for someone?
You don’t have to.
But I keep asking myself where exactly do they plan on going? The Moon seems off the menu and Mars is a pretty tough nut to crack. Can the human body even survive the nine month trip? There are a lot of people who think not.
Living in orbit might be one option but that requires an infrastructure that is almost mind-boggling in scale unless you wanted to live like they do on ISS, like Spam in a can.
None of this might seem particularly compelling in light of all the other issues that occupy peoples’ minds these days. But what if while we struggle and bicker and find ourselves distracted by the ephemeral issues of the day, major changes are being made, changes that will effect all our lives, changes we’ve been conditioned not only to scoff at but to barely even perceive? What if there’s something coming we can’t even wrap our heads around, it’s so improbable?
I don’t necessarily believe that’s so. But I’m not convinced that there aren’t others, far more powerful than myself, who disagree with me.
