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opposition to projects endorsed by the Ruler.
During the boom years this system produced
Dubai’s headlong expansion and misbegotten
projects like the World, an archipelago of 300
artificial islands (shaped like countries) that
remain largely uninhabited. But it also produced
the Dubai Metro, a smashing success built in less
than a decade and opened at the height of the
financial crisis. Projects like that give sustainability
mavens hope. “This country has developed
so quickly,” says Tanzeed Alam, of the Emirates
Wildlife Society. “It can change quickly too—
because the leadership gets behind it.”
Perhaps the greatest reason for hope is that
environmental imperatives are coming into line
with Dubai’s economic ones. It’s not just that
solar energy is cheap. Dubai is pivoting now, says
Rostock, because it has to—because it’s competing
with other cities for business and people, and
sustainability is in. “What we have is a willingness
and a push to change Dubai and how it’s
perceived,” Rostock says.
But this city has no intention of slowing down.
On a wall in Lootah’s office, a framed series of
aerial pictures shows how Dubai has evolved since
1935, when it was an impoverished fishing village.
At the center is a visualization of the future: It
shows a coast even more clogged with artificial
islands than it is today. Dubai’s population is on
track to double to more than five million by 2030.
The city lives off its expanding footprint: Nearly a
quarter of the population works in construction.
The choke point, if one comes, will be water
rather than energy. A shallow, almost closed sea,
the Persian Gulf is already up to 20 percent saltier
than the ocean, and it’s getting saltier: Dams in
Turkey and Iraq are diverting freshwater, climate
change is increasing evaporation—while making
Dubai even hotter—and desalination plants are
dumping hot brine. In time the water will become
ever harder to desalinate and perhaps too salty to
support a lot of the marine life that once supported
Dubai. “We still feel we can cope,” says Lootah.
With technology, “everything is possible.”
With enough solar power even guilt-free
indoor skiing becomes possible—and with climate
change, Dubai may need the respite. In the
summer, people already go outside as little as
possible. By 2100 there may be days so hot and
humid that going outside could kill you. Should
this city even be here? I put the question to Alam.
“That’s the wrong question,” he says. “It’s
more about accepting where we are today and
how do we make that better. It’s a question of the
right to develop and of human beings’ right for a
better future. How do we make cities better?” j
Robert Kunzig and photographer
Luca Locatelli
DUBAI’S AUDACIOUS GOAL 69