DUBAI - Dubai is growing faster than any city on earth, spending mind-boggling sums on a construction programme that is nothing less than dazzling. But what is truly impressive is the scale of its ambition. Could it become the most important place on the planet?
It looks like a hot Grozny. On the vast invented islands offshore and in the even vaster building sites that stretch in a wide band the whole length of DubaiÂ’s now famous riviera, acre on acre of grey- faced, concrete, hollow-eyed buildings, fenced in with scaffolding and overhung by tower cranes, stare at each other across the sands. Tower blocks look abandoned rather than half-made. It is said that a fifth of the worldÂ’s cranes are now at work here. An army of some 250,000 men, largely from India and Pakistan, are labouring to create the new glimmer fantasy, earning on average GBP150 a month, and living in camps, four to a room, 12ft by 12ft, hidden away in the industrial quarters of Al Quoz. One night in one of the luxury hotels would cost six monthsÂ’ wages of one of the men who built it. Below and around their work sites, the new streets are chaotic with rubble and piles of steel.
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