Photograph by Maggie Steber (National Geographic)I am amazed that we as humans can build so much at breakneck speed and, awash with cash, make attempts to contain nature - reclaiming land as residential property - and make the stuff of dreams - ski slopes with real snow at the edge of a desert - to the point of utter vanity and little substance. At the height of the Dubai success story, all we were hearing were the virtues of a deluxe carefree life and the transformation of fishing villages, beyond the oil boom to a new world finance hub with ivy league universities opening campuses there. Secure in the rising value of snapped up houses - that were not yet complete - oil money being seeded and bloomed using the sophisticated financial instruments that shook the world economy recently, who the hell were they kidding?
Yet, perhaps, hundreds of years from now people might write about Dubai in a folkloric manner, trying to understand what motivated humans back then - today - , what really caused the economic collapse - we may never know as the mechanism of the economic downturn is hysteria driven and hard to define -, and ultimately what the lesson is.
Some interesting reads if you really want to understand the Dubai legacy and what went wrong.
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.
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