what a fscked up world we live in ...
nothing more to say.
Dubai to get huge climate-controlled domed city and giga-mall
The ruler of Dubai has announced that the Gulf state is soon to build the world's first climate-controlled city, which will feature the largest area yet contained under a single transparent dome. The project is referred to by its organisers as "Mall of the World", and is intended to produce an city which can be traversed …
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 15:21 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: what a fscked up world we live in ...
It was Abu Dhabi who bailed them out. Just waiting long enough to let Dubai sweat, so they'd know who was boss in future...
I know this, because due to censorship Saudi Arabia won't show the Flintstones movie, but Abu Dhabi Do...
Sorry, I couldn't stop myself. I'd best get my coat.
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Thursday 11th September 2014 11:40 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: what a fscked up world we live in ...
The larger the shopping mall, the more likely it is to reach 100% handbags and shoes. There's a mile-long mall running down the west side of Kowloon, and it's achieved about 95% designer goods. There remains one or two places to buy a biscuit. A thousand shops and not a single one is selling a 1lb box of galvanized 4-inch nails.
Re: The tallest building in the world, Burj
DubaiKalifa. Last I read indicated that the function of city sewer pipes was being addressed with a fleet of trucks. Strange.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:02 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Wait a minute...
Clearly a new approach to cheat the Skyscraper Index of Impending Doom
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 08:53 GMT Anonymous Coward
Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
You don't need to be a sandal-shod lentil-muncher to think that this looks like a special way of achieving the improbable end result of doubling the environmental impact of oil - once through extracting and burning the stuff, and then again through squandering the profits on pointless vanity projects.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:55 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
I see no problem with that - that's what money is for after all.
If you make money, you can spend money. Sure, it may not be the wisest thing in someone's eyes, but YMMW.
The problem comes when money is cheap - i.e. when you can go to a bank and get freshly printed shite from a central bank. Because that is taxation of the hoi polloi via tricks. ANd once money stops being cheap, your project goes titsup and all the resources that went into it have been squandared.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 10:12 GMT James Micallef
Re: Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
But that's exactly why Dubai are spending their wealth rather cleverly. Instead of spending it on ever-more lavish palaces for the ruling classes, they spend in on project slike this which cost a bomb now but which become revenue-generators independent of oil production. By the time the oil runs out they can sustain the economy through health tourism, retail tourism etc.
I'm not sure if long-run the numbers stack up especially if less people go when the novelty wears off / there are other similair places to go and/or the running costs become too much. But in the meantime, kudos for giving it a go.
Other nations *ahem* have/had plenty of oil/gas wealth but precious little to show for it
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 12:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Conspicuous consumption @James Hughes 1
"So how would tourists get to Dubai once the oil runs out? Electric Zeppelin?"
"Dubai is on the coast.I'll let you fill in the details."
I presume you're suggesting people swim, given that a cruise ship uses around three times as much fuel per passenger km as a long haul jet.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 12:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
"But that's exactly why Dubai are spending their wealth rather cleverly"
Actually it's most unlikely to be their oil and gas wealth, because Dubai doesn't have much in the way of oil and gas, although other emirates like Bahrain do (all part of the loose federation that is the UAE). And history shows that Dubai don't spend this borrowed money wisely, either.
So not only is the Dubai property boom a case of building your house physically on sand, but financially as well. Back in 2009 Dubai World came a cropper after borrowing shedloads of money for vanity projects, and some $24bn of debt was "restructured" down to around $14bn. As you'd expect, arseholes like Royal Bank of Scotland had big buckets of exposure to the Dubai property boom, so British taxpayers ended up bailing a load of the Dubai World debts out for idiot London bankers. In addition to the writeoffs by international lenders, Dubai was bailed out by the oil and gas wealth of fellow emirates Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.
Clearly property investors have learned nothing, banks have learned that the more stupid their lending decision, the more likely it is that they will get bailed out, and I think the same lesson has been concluded by the rulers of Dubai, so we're now back to business as usual.
Now, we can beg to differ, but personally I think that building a mercantilist economy and a global retail destination is actually a huge risk if people believe that oil will start to run out. How will people get there if there's no airlines or no affordable fares? And what's the point in zillions of square feet in retail space if the only customers are a handful of Russian oligarch's wives who flew in on private jets? Meanwhile, the other oil states are doing two far more sensible things - trying to build conventional economies to keep a fast growing and increasingly bored population happy, and using the surplus to buy relatively safe and diversified foreign assets.
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Wednesday 9th July 2014 13:45 GMT James Micallef
Re: Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
As far as I know Dubai isn't just building mega-skyscrapers and vanity projects but also heavily investing in solar and working on a nuclear power station as well, they'll be OK for energy when the oil runs out.
I agree they might not be educating their children to look after any of the technical stuff that keeps life going, but if they can sustainably profit from other activities they can just continue hiring foreigners to do this work for them as they are doing now.
The "if they can sustainably profit from other activities" part is of course an unknown but at least they are willing to explore new concepts
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Wednesday 9th July 2014 09:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Conspicuous consumption at it's worst
Sorry, I lived in Dubai for 8 years, and if you think this kind of thing is spending money wisely, rather than in the rulers' own self interest, you're deluded.
There is nothing but worthless desert there, there is nothing sustainable beyond when the oil runs out. The locals have had oil money for 40 years, and they still cannot educate and instil a work ethic in their kids so they can fly their own airliners or engineer their own oil production. Why bother, when you can just pay foreigners to do these things? This is not Singapore or HK or China, countries that value education, hard work and doing things themselves, despite the great wealth they've come by. It's a lottery win, that they're busy frittering away and having a good time with while pretending their business people.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
Wow, it's almost like someone sat down and thought "I wonder how I can use more energy". I'm sure it'll be amazing when it's complete but I'm not sure it'll be able to pull in enough money to be self sustaining. Perhaps I'm underestimating how many rich people there are in the world that want to fly to Dubai for a face lift. If I was running Dubai I would be pumping money into setting my country up as a leading producer of hydrogen and renewable power, something that will always have value.
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Thursday 4th September 2014 08:37 GMT Psyx
"Wow, it's almost like someone sat down and thought "I wonder how I can use more energy"."
The energy is free for them. Pump up enough oil and you get plenty of gas. There's enough of that to make electricity (and hence de-sal water) effectively free in the Gulf States. Utilities cost a negligible amount.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 10:31 GMT Don Dumb
Re: Elysium on Earth ?
It is interesting that it does sound absolutely horrific but I can't help thinking that the fact they are doing it in Dubai makes it seem that way. I wonder if they were doing this in Japan it might seem to be much cooler.
From the article - "Additional districts within the project will include .... a cultural celebration district " I'm guessing not many cultures will be celebrated. Can't imagine they'll be having a pride march.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:26 GMT Anomalous Cowshed
The indoor city will use environmental technology to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions
This is like when they say: "We're building this massive skyscraper in London / Dubai / My Dong, and it is designed with environmentally friendly techniques approved by [insert name of highly respectable yet bogus smelling organisation] to dramatically cut its energy consumption" conveniently omitting that the construction and running of the thing will cause enormous expenditure of energy and environmental damage, which in most cases, but for the lining of the pockets of developers and their associates, could have been avoided.
As my respected cousin, Anonymous Coward, wrote a little higher, Dubai could really throw a trump card by producing masses of electricity / drinking water / hydrogen / what-have-you using the massive quantities of sunshine which they are blessed with. Or at least, build this indoor city to fleece the rich of this world but with solar panels all over it on heat insulation panels, with a narrow gaps between them to provide gentle sunlight below, so as not to waste the space or the energy. Now that would make sense.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 10:08 GMT Hollerith 1
Re: I had a break in Dubai, last year
I just had a work gig there, and it struck me as being in a city on Mars. You can't really step outside and inside the only thing to do is work or shop. It is a place for money, by money. Save for the slave-labour it is built with and runs on, it's a great place if you want to divorce yourself from anything real and meaningful. It didn't take me a moment to turn down the offer of a full-time gig there.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 11:23 GMT Defrost
Re: I had a break in Dubai, last year
Summer's hell but during winter time the weather is actually pretty cool, from nov to march I must say it's maybe the best weather I did found around the world. Still, after a couple times around the desert and a couple of swims, everything became pretty much boring as you said. I did turn down an offer of a full-time gig as well. But maybe they just paid me not THAT much.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 22:26 GMT Queasy Rider
Re: I had a break in Dubai, last year
Of course you wouldn't want to work in Dubai. The place is traditionally highly stratified socially, with their rich upper classes lording over the common workers, while in Britain you could be working for a fraction of Dubai wages while the rich upper classes... oh wait, never mind, it's the climate, right?
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 15:33 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: or indeed that it is perfectly survivable anyway
This dome will be no better. I walked into a Dubai shopping centre. It was 40°C and humid outside, then I walked into a wall of ice. It was 18°C and dry inside. That was an almost painful transition. Although not as bad as walking back out through the doors into the heat was.
And I was there in October. In July/August it hits 50!
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Thursday 10th July 2014 05:10 GMT JLV
>wall of ice
I woulda sworn an ex-employer's offices were set up that way.
Chilly in winter, but they kept it even colder in summer. It wasn't the servers, they were in their own room, but just stupid management.
Dubai? It would be an ok idea to diversify, if they could bother their own citizens to have the skills necessary to make money from those diversified businesses. Or at least be employed by them.
As it is, a few rich Doobies will scam money out of it, some expats will milk it, many more Indians & Bengladeshis will be treated abusively to build them. The average Dubai citizen will remain on their version of the dole.
Album Elephantum indeed.
P.S.
"responsible for a lot of carbon emissions"
did Lewis really express concern about CO2? Must. Fix. My. Brain. ;-)
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Thursday 10th July 2014 17:36 GMT h4rm0ny
Re: >wall of ice
>>"did Lewis really express concern about CO2? Must. Fix. My. Brain. ;-)"
No, he said if global warming resumes. AGW skepticism isn't about pretending climate doesn't change, it's questioning whether human activity is the primary factor and, following on from that, whether models predicting future catastrophic change are accurate.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:37 GMT Cliff
Not just the air
UAE relies on fossil fuels to desalinate the drinking water - when the fuel starts running short and water scarce it'll empty out in a heartbeat.
As stupid as air conditioning the desert is, it may be that putting a lid over the buildings isn't massively more inefficient than all the individually cooled buildings - they all lose their cool individually, but if the cooler air leaks into a contained space as opposed to hot streets, it may not be quite as stupid as it first appears.
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Tuesday 8th July 2014 09:58 GMT Don Dumb
Re: Not just the air
@Cliff -
"As stupid as air conditioning the desert is, it may be that putting a lid over the buildings isn't massively more inefficient than all the individually cooled buildings - they all lose their cool individually, but if the cooler air leaks into a contained space as opposed to hot streets, it may not be quite as stupid as it first appears."
It's a good point but it would only work if the whole city is built accordingly. Or will the 'outside' - the streets and communal areas be set at a higher temperature than the inside of buildings? So they still end up air conditioning the buildings separately anyway.
It seems that in most places people prefer a higher temperature outside than they do inside. (We go to hot places for their nice weather but still end up air conditioning the hotel rooms because we don't want that temperature when we sleep!)
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
