There's some terraforming for you. Lots of sun for solar power to desal all the water they're going to need to keep this little place green.

How big is the smaller bridge to the right?
It looks like it will be bigger than Sydney Harbour or Bayonne!

From an article on Dubai found on the BBC News site today - "A Swiss national is serving a four-year jail term after three poppy seeds from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow airport were found on his clothes."
Hmmm - I hope this kind of thing doesn't feature too much in the "urban landscape of the future"...

I can't wait till Dubai's economy falls, because that landscape of the future is going to be a pretty kick-ass backdrop for some serious Road Warrior meets Escape from New York action. And the streets will be ruled by an anarchic motorcycle gang calling themselves "The Dubikers".

Seven stars? Yes, and my own cooking is 15 Stars by an equally objective standard.

Just curious: since they're going to build this, how is this SciFi? Shouldn't this be on Gizmodo?

The architecture of Dubai always blows me away. It must be amazing in person. The pictures just floor me.

It will have 12 lanes for traffic.

It will have 12 lanes for male-only driver traffic.

Fixed.

The design has Sheikh Mohammed's official stamp of approval.

Whatevs. Bifröst had Odin's official seal of approval.

and it is going to be built by the finest slave labor from all over asia and the middle east.

i can understand people being wowed by this place in a technological sense but it's almost like loving hitler for making the trains run on time.

Fuck Dubai! [www.warrenellis.com]

The design has Sheikh Mohammed's official stamp of approval.

Better hope it doesn't get Cthulhu's *stomp* of disapproval.

It will have 12 lanes for male-only driver traffic.

The UAE does not prevent women from driving.

We could build stuff like this too...that is if we didn't spend all our money on oil. Opps.

Dubai is just going to be the city from Minority Report in 10 years.

@92BuickLeSabre:
Really?
Because the Bur Al Arab picks you up from the airport in Rolls Royce, you have your our butler during your stay....
I'm pretty cure they can claim more that 5 stars..

too bad no one intelligent will ever go there unless they've got enough money to buy off their fascist government. people talk like america's bad and...wooooh boy.

@Neil: There's a fellow, Warren Ellis is friends with him, and talks about him on www.warrenellis.com, who is currently in jail there because the Dubai authorities believe that some dirt found in the bottom of one of his bags is actually hash.

IO9ers, that is some awesome urban landscape porn, and keep it comin'!

Even though Dubai and UAE can eat a plate o' dicks. With a 0.0013-gram sample of marijuana stuck to the bottom of it. Atop a grandiose bridge to the 22nd century. NEXT!

@DocGratis: I'm not saying it's not the sweetest most awesome stay in the entire world.

But when the outside evaluations only go up to 5 Stars, awarding yourself 7 Stars is a little like turning the music up to eleven.

The Emirate of Dubai is doing some really cool things, technologically/city-planning wise. It's nice to see a place where progress isn't considered bad.

It isn't the most progressive place in the world, but it's doing pretty well by the standards of it's neighbors, and the developing world in general - how about we give them a break, and some time to continue imoproving? Here in the US, women have had the vote for less than a century, for example.

As for those 'slaves'... Perhaps you should ask them if they'd prefer to not have the jobs? There are people lined up in hellholes like Calcutta, who would love to upgrade their situation to that of the 'slaves'. It's all well and good for us to look down our noses at their treatment, but it's better than starving, and we aren't exactly offering them anything better.
-Kle.

@92BuickLeSabre: Well I will grant you that.. But the star system is hardly universal, some countries have set requirements, but it is not standardized..

And if having a free shuttle to the airport is a min for a say level 4 hotel (which I don't think it is), having a rolls personally pick up us has to be worth something beyond say level 4.

Ideally somebody who does these rating should have some expectations and set up ratings, but when there is only one hotel with that rating what do you do, set them to be what they do..?

There have been a number of 'six star' hotels and from the description this seven star seems to offer their level of service and then some...

@Klebert: people get lured into jobs where they work to pay back the cost of bringing them there, with interest. only they are never able to actually pay it off with their wages and their passports are held by their "employers".
i think slave is pretty accurate. perhaps people are still willing to enter into that arrangement but i'd like to see how many would opt out if given the chance later on.
also, saying they are doing well compared to their neighbors is a pretty low bar to set.
you are right that we aren't doing any better and that sucks but it still shouldn't give dubai a pass.
lastly, a large part of the funding for 9/11 went through dubai and they flat out refuse to provide help of any kind in unraveling any of it.

@EBone: "just curious: since they're going to build this, how is this SciFi?"

Because maintaining it will be SciFi. Who's gonna climb up those towering arches for the occasional inspection..?

awesomeness

Too bad the U.A.E. is no where on the map, still ...

can u say . . . "The Day After Tommorrow" ?

@ideaman2020:
Because maintaining it will be SciFi. Who's gonna climb up those towering arches for the occasional inspection..?

someone getting paid 10 AED and hour...

@Nebris: Seconded. The world center of hubris. No more fantasies of a dream job there for me.

i believe that the hell's gate bridge in NYC is currently the largest, though the Sydney bridge is the largest arch road bridge.

Is the sci-fi part of this the idea that bridge will be built for less than a billion dollars?

to bad we'll all have flying cars by 2012 and bridges will be obsolete

@harumph:
"slaves" - Sure, it isn't great. I expect it beats starving to death in a hellish slum though, or working in that beach-front ship breakers on the beach in India, for instance. I find it unwise to deny an opportunity to people, just because it seems like a bad opportunity to us, from our lofty perch of riches and power.

"doing well compared to their neighbors" - I'm saying they're doing well compared to most of the world, outside the west. Better than China. At least as good as Singapore. Better than Indonesia. About as well as India. A bit worse than Brazil.

"funded 9/11, not helping" - They actually do a lot for the US government. I'm not going to complain when they balk slightly at helping in ways likely to destabilize their nation.

The actions of individuals are not the same as the actions of national governments. A lot of Americans went over to Spain to fight for the Communists in their civil war. That doesn't mean that it was an act of the US government, or that when the other side won, the US government somehow owed something to the Spanish government.
-Kle.

Dubai is indeed doing all these big architectural infrastructure projects, but so what? It was on 60 Minutes the other week. The TV reporter didnt' bother to ask how many Westerners live there, how many Jews and Catholics and Christians work and live there, etc.
I guess once they run out of oil they want to have business and tourism to fall back on, but who would want to visit a place like Dubai. It's hot and elitist and the government's probably just a few rungs better than the Saudis. It's just a matter of time before fundamentalist Muslims decide to target the Westerners living there and then...
So what if you build the world's tallest building, or biggest bridge, or man-made islands when no one's coming to see any of it anyway?

@Klebert: Scifi dreams aside, the human cost is too high to ignore and no amount of padding will disguise this as not being slavery. ¿Opportunity? More like letting the dogs eat whatever falls from the table.
What will happen when -and it will- Dubai resources end (not further than 10-15 years hence)? then we will see the civil unrest and societal decay that this hubris represent.
This is a future with clay feet.

I'm not concerned by Sheik Mohammad's creating an adult Disneyland at the cost of a bit of the ecology; it's inconsequential in the picture of what is happening to the overall ecology of the planet.

And I don't care about the billions spent building it; that's a drop in the bucket.

I DO care that he has created a modern pirate state from which business and industry can sally forth to plunder the nations and to which they can return for freedom for taxation of their ill-gotten gains and immunity from prosecution for their criminal acts (cf. Halliburton, Carlyle Group, etc.). In that aspect, it may do the world more economic harm than we can imagine.

"It will cost 817 million dollars." -- That's actually pretty cheap considering how much the Bay Bridge renovation is costing.

@MarlboroTestMonkey7:
Please name for me a nation built w/o a gigantic human cost?

The whole point of this development is to have something else once the oil runs out. They're aiming to be the Wall Street of central Asia.

@Xin:

"it's hot and elitist and the government's probably only a rung or two better than the Saudis, who'd want to go there?"

Gee, that all sounds just like Monaco. Nobody goes there, either.
-Kle.