“Go Big or Go Home.”
That’s the unofficial Texas motto. And, with the immense tourism projects cropping up in the Middle East lately, it’s evident Dubai is taking a page out of the Lonestar State’s play book.
Via Middle East Times:
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Widely touted as the Middle East’s very own Orlando, Dubailand, a cluster of mega-billion-dollar projects, is gradually emerging across the desert sands of the booming Gulf emirate.
Faced with a dwindling wealth of oil, Dubai has taken on a new challenge of larger-than-life projects in line with its ambition to become the region’s main business and leisure hub.
And by “dwindling wealth of oil”, I take it they mean they have “less billions” than they did just several years ago? The horror!
Already primed as a holiday destination, it is fast executing plans to build a host of new hotels, golf courses, malls, and leisure facilities in order to more than double the number of tourists to 15 million by 2015.
Initially planned to cover an area of 2 billion square feet (185 square kilometers), Dubailand, billed as the “world’s most ambitious tourism, leisure, and entertainment project,” is expected to be a sprawling 3 billion square feet. This would make it larger than the entire city of Orlando, Florida – home to Walt Disney World, Universal Resort, Sea World, and a variety of other attractions and hotels.
Walt Disney, eat your Technicolor heart out!
Just think about that for a minute: It’s not going to be bigger than Walt Disney World. No, it’s going to be larger than the entire city of Orlando, Florida. I know it’s difficult for people to put such vastness into perspective, but having lived in Florida for some time, I can tell you that that’s almost incomprehensibly large.
At a time when airlines and tourism are Al Gore’s collective poster siblings for the global warming epidemic, it’s stunning (or perhaps not) to see such blatant human disregard for the inevitable environmental impact this construction will cause.
With the Chinese paving Mount Everest; the Japanese planning a 3000-foot, million-inhabitant pyramid for Tokyo Bay; and books like Edward Burtynsky’s Manufactured Landscapes depicting a grim, global future present in which no world wonder or landscape is safe from man’s crushing expansion, now’s the time to travel. Get out and see the world before it’s all Applebee’s and animatronic “It’s a Small World” puppets.
[shudder]