Dubai Pearl

Sometimes I don’t go to work or school merely because I don’t want to drive there. Sad, I know. You’d understand what I was talking about if you lived in Los Angeles or any other unbearably congested city. But can you imagine if you had the opportunity to live, work and play in the same building?  Well, you can in Dubai! The structure is called Dubai Pearl and it’s pretty much a vertical city, a luxurious one obviously, that was built specifically for me and all the other lazy asses out there. Upon completion, it will be a home to nine-thousand people and twelve-thousand professionals will be able to work there. That’s only the beginning. It will also have six 5 star hotels, MGM Grand and Bellagio are two you may be familiar with from your Vegas trip last Labor Day Weekend. A Cinema complex, restaurants, spas, malls, gyms, hospitals, offices, convention centers, strip clubs (just kidding), but yah you get the point. When I said city, I wasn’t kidding. 

             The Al-Futtaim group is a private company behind this development however they have investors and subcontractors from all over the world working on this project to deliver the best quality. The group has close connections with the royal family which has invested money into the project along with the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre) which illustrates the increasing merge of public and private sectors in global markets and assets. This is significant because there is a lower probability of failure if a government is invested in the project. This is a prime example because key investors withdrew billions of dollars of investment into this project during the peak of the financial crisis in 2008. So many projects have halted or completely fell apart in Dubai during the financial crisis but the Dubai Pearl kept going and is still projected to be built on time which further shows the confidence investors have in this magnificent project that will cost $4.1 billion.

There’s a mentality with Dubai of ‘build and they will come’ with what seems to be an oversupply of hotel and office space that simply cannot be filled with the current global economic climate. Nonetheless, Dubai remains to be the business hub of the Middle East and is a key representation of the efforts of the gulf countries to push into industries that are not dependent on natural resources. The UAE is expecting a population growth in the next decade of about two million that is nearly 20% of the current population. So to put that more into perspective, USA has about 300 million people so that would mean an expected growth of 60 million people! This expected growth demonstrates the results of globalization where it is now very common for an individual to immigrate to another country for economic opportunities. With the increasing importance of sovereign wealth funds of the gulf Arab states, many have chose to call Dubai their new home and the lucky ones will call their new home, Dubai Pearl.