Sunday, November 23, 2008

The Big Picture: Dubai

Dubai has been getting a lot of press coverage recently (at least in the press I read and listen to!) due to its extraordinary growth and wealth. This week's Big Picture from the Boston Globe focuses on Dubai. Of the many remarkable images this week, perhaps the most striking is one of the Burg Dubai.
It is already the world's tallest freestanding structure and will be 2684 feet tall (over half a mile) when complete. Looking at all the images in this collection, I wonder how much longer until they have a crash of epic proportions...or replace the U.S. as the land of conspicuous consumption.

9 comments:

kkdither said...

Doesn't Michael Jackson live or have connections to Dubai? If you look up Dubai on Google maps, you can zoom in and see the "islands" they created. Pretty cool to see the shapes. One is a palm tree and the latest is the world map.

OrbsCorbs said...

They need us as badly as we need them.

drewzepmeister said...

I wonder if we need oxygen when we reach the top?

hale-bopp said...

Not quite, drew. Remember, the altitude at Denver is about twice this height and you don't need oxygen there!

One of the most amazinst stats I remember from the show Marketplace when they did a week on Dubai was that 20% of those construction cranes they use to build skyscrapers are in Dubai...20% of all the cranes in the world in one city!

Lizardmom said...

I don't like heights, and things that make me feel short, I'll stay here, thanks :)

Anonymous said...

I would sure hate to have an apartment in that thing on the 210th floor, and have to go to the john real bad........with all the elevators out of service.

OrbsCorbs said...

Is that a huge phallic symbol, or are they giving the rest of the world the finger?

OKIE said...

I wonder, if you get an apartment at the top, do you get a parachute in case of fire?

hale-bopp said...

Back in my college days, some friends and I went "Building Hopping" in Chicago. The rules were simple: We went to the Sears Tower, the Hancock Building, and the Standard Oil (now the Aon) building. We each had to enter through a public entrance on the ground floor, find any combination of elevators and/or stairs, and see how high up the building we could go (without paying to go to the top, of course). I won due to an impressive showing getting up into the 80's in the Hancok building.