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E-mail a friendHas Dubai's Bubble Burst?
The very notion of the place is, at best, fantastical; at worst, suspect. A glittering metropolis in the desert, built on a foundation of sand and equally copious amounts of oil money and hype. It was to be the center of commerce and trade in the Middle East, where the international could golf, ski (indoors, naturally) and buy as many Chanel bags as their Centurion cards could accommodate.
Dubai, which has very little oil of its own, built all this with money from neighboring Abu Dhabi, which has lots of the stuff. The plan was to invest the oil money in building a city from the ground up, and make it all back in the then-lucrative real estate market. This was the time, remember, when enterprising Joe Six-packs were making fortunes flipping single family homes in Tallahassee, so you can imagine how much money there was to be made from homes on islands shaped like palm trees that you can see from space. That's just how they do in Dubai.
Or how they did, anyway. Reports this week announce glumly that Dubai's foremost holding company, Dubai World, is having trouble carrying a $60 billion dollar debt. Does this mean the end of the glittering dream that was Dubai? Probably not, as long as that black gold keeps flowing next door. But this may curtail the building of any more islands shaped like things in the near future.
The quote that always comes to mind when rumblings emerge about the house of cards Dubai may turn out to be comes from the city-state's former ruler, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. "My grandfather rode a camel," he said, "my father rode a camel, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel." What it lacks in brevity it makes up for in prescience. Glittering metropolis in the desert or no, it's a brave new world out there, and Dubai's pre-recession plan may need some adjusting.