Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty
Tens of thousands of residents and tourists have left UAE since the US and Israel started bombing Iran two weeks ago, leaving beach bars, malls and hotels eerily empty
Dubai was always an economy built on a bubble. As much as I hate how they treat foreign laborers and as much as I hate their current leaders, I have some respect for how far they were able to get with this model.
But ultimately, they are a country with little land, little water, terrible weather, and surviving on a vast expat population that has no path to citizenship and will always just see it as a destination to milk for as much money as possible.
I don’t see how such a model could ever be seen as sustainable in the long run.
I’m kinda annoyed that even with infinite oil money, they proceeded to design a compleltly unsustainable city for as cheaply as possible.
I would have thrown that money into some next gen terraforming and serious civil engineering projects to make a technological hypercity.
Instead we just got the billionaire’s backyard of concrete, glass, and roads.
You’re thinking of Abu Dhabi. Dubai doesnt really have much oil money which is why they went hard on the “sharia Vegas” thing. Abu Dhabi has actually bailed them out in the past.
You could almost say it was built on sand…
One could say the same about Singapore, yet it seems to be here to stay.
Singapore isn’t in the middle of a desert
I’ve lived in both and while the similarities are there, it’s a bit different. Singapore still has a majority non expat population while Dubai has only about a 10% local population. Singapore also invests heavily in local education with one of the highest densities of PhDs in the world.