Dubai pääsi jälleen otsikoihin kun siellä avautui äskettäin maailman korkein rakennus, Burj Dubai. Rakennus ylettyy yli 800 metrin korkeuteen, joten se on siis selvästi korkeampi kuin aikaisempi maailman korkein rakennus, 508-metrinen Taipei 101.

Olen aina pitänyt Dubaita hyvin kiehtovana paikkana. Se on yksi seitsemästä emiraatista, jotka muodostavat Yhdistyneet arabiemiraatit. Se eroaa muista emiraateista siten, että vain 6 % sen bruttokansantuotteesta tulee öljystä. Dubain uskottiin olevan malliesimerkki siitä, kuinka öljystä riippuvainen alue nousisi tulevaisuudessa omilleen oikeanlaisilla sijoituksilla. Alue on rakennettu lähes kokonaan uusiksi: siellä on maailman ainoa 7 tähden hotelli, maailmankartan muodostava saarimuodostelma, vedenalainen hotelli ja jopa kokonainen laskettelukeskus keskellä aavikkoa.

Dubai 1990-luvun alussa:

Sama katu vuonna 2003:

Eikä rakennusinto ole loppumassa mihinkään. Dubai City Towerin suunnitelmat julkistettiin vuonna 2008. Jos rakennus toteutuu suunnitelmien mukaan, siitä tulee vaatimattomat 2,4 kilometriä korkea.

Voi kuitenkin olla, että unelma aavikon kesyttävästä luksuskaupungista tulee kaatumaan omaan mahdottomuuteensa. Viime syksynä Dubain valtion sijoitusyhtiö, Dubai World, ilmoitti olevansa noin 36 miljardin euron jättivelkojensa vuoksi täysin maksukyvytön. Samalla selvisi, että koko Dubain emiirikunta on joutunut niin vakavaan velkakierteeseen, että tilanne melkein horjutti koko maailmantaloutta. Vaikka Dubai saikin avustusta naapuriltaan Abu Dhabilta, alueen tulevaisuus on edelleen vaakalaudalla. Johann Hari on tehnyt mielenkiintoisen artikkelin Dubain tilanteesta, tässä muutama kohokohta:

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Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

Dubai only had a dribble of oil compared to neighbouring Abu Dhabi – so Sheikh Maktoum decided to use the revenues to build something that would last. Israel used to boast it made the desert bloom; Sheikh Maktoum resolved to make the desert boom. He would build a city to be a centre of tourism and financial services, sucking up cash and talent from across the globe. He invited the world to come tax-free – and they came in their millions, swamping the local population, who now make up just 5 per cent of Dubai. A city seemed to fall from the sky in just three decades, whole and complete and swelling. They fast-forwarded from the 18th century to the 21st in a single generation.

Sheikh Mohammed turned Dubai into Creditopolis, a city built entirely on debt. Dubai owes 107 percent of its entire GDP. It would be bust already, if the neighbouring oil-soaked state of Abu Dhabi hadn’t pulled out its chequebook. Mohammed says this will constrict freedom even further. “Now Abu Dhabi calls the tunes – and they are much more conservative and restrictive than even Dubai. Freedom here will diminish every day.” Already, new media laws have been drafted forbidding the press to report on anything that could “damage” Dubai or “its economy”. Is this why the newspapers are giving away glossy supplements talking about “encouraging economic indicators”?

Here, off the coast of Dubai, developers have been rebuilding the world. They have constructed artificial islands in the shape of all planet Earth’s land masses, and they plan to sell each continent off to be built on. There were rumours that the Beckhams would bid for Britain. But the people who work at the nearby coast say they haven’t seen anybody there for months now. “The World is over,” a South African suggests. All over Dubai, crazy projects that were Under Construction are now Under Collapse. They were building an air-conditioned beach here, with cooling pipes running below the sand, so the super-rich didn’t singe their toes on their way from towel to sea.

The projects completed just before the global economy crashed look empty and tattered. The Atlantis Hotel was launched last winter in a $20m fin-de-siecle party attended by Robert De Niro, Lindsay Lohan and Lily Allen. Sitting on its own fake island – shaped, of course, like a palm tree – it looks like an immense upturned tooth in a faintly decaying mouth. It is pink and turreted – the architecture of the pharaohs, as reimagined by Zsa-Zsa Gabor. Its Grand Lobby is a monumental dome covered in glitterballs, held up by eight monumental concrete palm trees. Standing in the middle, there is a giant shining glass structure that looks like the intestines of every guest who has ever stayed at the Atlantis. It is unexpectedly raining; water is leaking from the roof, and tiles are falling off.

The very earth is trying to repel Dubai, to dry it up and blow it away. The new Tiger Woods Gold Course needs four million gallons of water to be pumped on to its grounds every day, or it would simply shrivel and disappear on the winds. The city is regularly washed over with dust-storms that fog up the skies and turn the skyline into a blur. When the dust parts, heat burns through. It cooks anything that is not kept constantly, artificially wet.

Sheikh Maktoum built his showcase city in a place with no useable water. None. There is no surface water, very little acquifer, and among the lowest rainfall in the world. So Dubai drinks the sea. The Emirates’ water is stripped of salt in vast desalination plants around the Gulf – making it the most expensive water on earth. It costs more than petrol to produce, and belches vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as it goes. It’s the main reason why a resident of Dubai has the biggest average carbon footprint of any human being – more than double that of an American.

Global warming, he adds, makes the problem even worse. “We are building all these artificial islands, but if the sea level rises, they will be gone, and we will lose a lot. Developers keep saying it’s all fine, they’ve taken it into consideration, but I’m not so sure.”

Is the Dubai government concerned about any of this? “There isn’t much interest in these problems,” he says sadly. But just to stand still, the average resident of Dubai needs three times more water than the average human. In the looming century of water stresses and a transition away from fossil fuels, Dubai is uniquely vulnerable.

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Aika näyttää, tuleeko Dubaista maailman kallein aavekaupunki.

Michael