I was watching the National Geographic channel last night in my hotel room, here in Amsterdam, where I am currently waiting for my flight home at Schipol airport. The cuddly Dutch public announcements leave you in no doubt where you are:
“Passenger Schmidt, you are delaying the flight to Bremen from gate D45, Immediate boarding please. We will proceed to offload your luggage.”
In other words, you will have sanctions taken against you. Rather a good example of the famous “Dutch Directness.” In other words, the right to say whatsoever you damn well please, and the other person is supposed to just suck it up and be grateful to live in the midst of such a bunch of free-thinkers.
Anyway, so there I am in the hotel room, having had a good curry down in the restaurant district, when the rather good programme “Megastructures” comes on. This time it is about the creation of the Palm Islands off the coast of Dubai. The Crown Prince, having realised that the oil is going to peak in 2016 for their country’s oilfields, declared that they wanted to be one of the world’s leading tourist destinations instead, and make revenue that way. What does Dubai having going for it? Sunshine, if nothing else. Lots and lots of Sunshine, and a lot of actually rather nice white sand beaches.
But in the words of Gloria Stern, “There is no there, there.” So, needs must they create something. The hotels like Barj-al-Arab are already famed as being architectural wonders, and so the things were proceeding on the right track. Except if you want to have 15 million tourists a year to this rather small state, you will need more than the few tens of kilometres of coastline that nature gave you, and so what to do?
In what is a rather inspired solution to the problem, at one level, they decided to extend the beach front by creating what can only be described as fractal artificial islands in the sea, to extend the beach front of the territory by over 2,000%. This is the famous Palm Island and its successors. The program was about how these were being constructed.
One of the edicts was that only natural materials could be used, e.g. rocks and sand. The solution was to build a big circular breakwater around the circumference of the intended island, and then to build the palm fronds inside this protected water. The thing that surprised me was that the island is literally made of sand dredged off of the sea bed further out, and then squirted out of a hose on the dredger into the sea where the structure is intended to be. The external breakwater than has a layer of rough rocks put on it to keep it from eroding quickly, but in the breakwater, there is nothing but sand making up the islands.
The integrity of the sand is then increased by compacting it with vibrating drills to settle the upper layers, and it is on this, to my mind very dubious, foundation that all of the developments will take place. Aside from some teething problems like figuring our how to stop the water in the lagoon going rancid, which involved some strategic breaks in the breakwater to allow the tide to circulate, the project seems to have been carried out successfully over the course of a few years. Such much so in fact that the Emir has asked for the construction of three more islands, including the one that is notably lacking in hubris, called The World.
However, this strikes me as being the least sustainable building project in human history, and certainly one that makes your average Florida real-estate deal look like a steal. The islands have to be maintained by dredging and re-stocking of the sand, or they erode. The Bible, which is not a book I quote that often, does have some pretty clear advice about houses built on sand. Apparently, the people who will buy these high density McMansions on Sea will come to sun themselves, and see and be seen at such cultural highlights as the 45 day long “Dubai Shopping Festival”.
What about that then?
Well let’s think about some issues, shall we.
Dubai is in the middle of no-where, and so you need to fly there to have fun, from any major population centre, none of which is especially close.
The local area is desert, and so all the water, food, services, golf courses, swimming pools and so on are artificial, and only exist because of the huge input of cheap energy that is required to manage these kinds of things. Without air-conditioning for example, it is dubious that the gilded ones of the world will want to sit out a 48 Centigrade average summer temperature.
Cheap energy is coming to an end, which is precisely why the Emir wants to build this interesting folly. But does it not occur to anyone that the death of cheap oil means the death of cheap travel, which is what would make this kind of thing possible?
The houses are built on sand in the middle of the sea, and so will not ever be independently stable or viable.
The high point of the local culture is the ability to go shopping for the same mega-mall brands that you get elsewhere, although admittedly, I imagine that this is going to be quite cheap, otherwise it is hard to see that this would be attractive.
In other words it is a kind of unrealistic mix of Las Vegas and Atlantis, that relies on a set of conditions, and the interest of a group of highly and super rich that might or might not come.
Finally, and this is the tin foil hat clincher for the whole thing, the whole area is in the terribly well-managed and stable Gulf region, where Iraq and Iran are squaring up to be very problematical, and also the gifting of 100,000 or so tonnes of Depleted Uranium in the countries opposite the development coastline, and at times upwind of them, may make this the most benighted real-estate development since, well, almost ever. If you want to read about the effects and scale of the problem to do with DU, and the real weapons of mass destruction program in the Middle East, check this one out. (Tin Foil Hat ON for this one…)
Besides, what rebel terrorist group in the region would possibly attack a seaward facing island of about five by three kilometres that faces out to sea, that is full of the world’s richest people, possible infidels to boot, and is entirely indefensible? Would you have thought of it?
Which is why I think that this will be the monument to our folly in the later twentieth and early twenty-first century. Generations removed from ours will be able to go there, if they still have the means, and stare around them at the high tide mark of our wilful self-destruction, assuming anything still exists.
If you buy a house there, Ozymandius House might be a good name.
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