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Cloud City

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Very cool picture of Dubai, taken from what will become the world’s tallest building.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 11:34 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “Cloud City”

  1. #1 |  ftp |  July 13th, 2008 at 1:27 am

    beautiful view from the top of the world.

  2. #2 |  Justin |  July 13th, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Are you sure it’s a picture? It looks like the CGI landscape of some futuristic movie…

  3. #3 |  Mikestermike |  July 13th, 2008 at 2:17 am

    Was in Dubai more than 10 years ago…none of that was there. Intercontinental Hotel was tallest around. Man, has times changed. They’ll still throw you in the clink for cough syrup, tho, so capitalism hasn’t trumped idiocy, er, religion…not yet.

  4. #4 |  the friendly grizzly |  July 13th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    I take it we have heard from Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other eco-nut groups protesting this rampant and profligate construction that is interfering with bird migration and other blah blah blah.

    Haven’t we?

  5. #5 |  Sydney Carton |  July 13th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    It is absolutely pathetic that we’re not building tall skyscrapers like that here in America.

  6. #6 |  ken j |  July 13th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    Earlier this year I was off the coast of Dubai, I had a similar view from the sea. It was at sunrise and the buildings were still lit up and the tops of them were rising from the fog. If I was a better writer, I’d be able to describe the surreal beauty of it, but I’m not so I won’t.

    I read about how Dubai has become wealthy enough to support their building boom, and it just doesn’t seem sustainable to me. I think it may become the world’s largest Potemkin village. But what do I know?

    They also block any websites that may have adult content (hey, I’m a sailor, give me a break), but you can go to the York hotel and get a whore whenever you want. In a nutshell, it’s a weird place.

  7. #7 |  Sam |  July 13th, 2008 at 5:13 pm

    Looks fake to me.

  8. #8 |  JJH2 |  July 13th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Oh uh. There’s some National Greatness Libertarian Skyscraper-Envy going on here (the bigger the better, baby!).

    Actually, there are lots of great reasons that enormous, ornate skyscrapers aren’t being built in the US (and probably shouldn’t be). The most significant being that the same kind of space restrictions that exist in Dubai don’t necessarily exist in the US. But significantly as well, the Dubai government heavily subsidizes foreign investment and construction projects, with the crown Prince of Dubai also being president of the Dubai Development and Investment Authority. Additionally, the Emirate’s most important development company, Emaar Properties, which, consequently, is building the Burj Dubai (the building the picture in Radley’s link was taken from), is partially owned by the government (and many of the shares that aren’t outright owned by the government are owned by prominent government officials). Not to mention that Dubai’s entire construction industry is fueled by an exploitative labor system rife with human rights abuses, and where protests over unpaid wages and working conditions can result in deportation from the Emirate.

    All things considered, I’ll take my buildings a little less ornate, and a little tall. In a free market, the government doesn’t subsidize giant national penis-replacement projects.

  9. #9 |  Matt Moore |  July 13th, 2008 at 6:16 pm

    It is absolutely pathetic that we’re not building tall skyscrapers like that here in America.

    It would be truly pathetic if we built anything just to impress a bunch of totalitarian sheiks.

  10. #10 |  OGRE |  July 13th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    Patheticness or not, I like this picture very much. Its my new wallpaper until something else more interesting comes along…

  11. #11 |  Sydney Carton |  July 13th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    The bigger the better? Yes, to some degree. Of course the reason that Dubai is building them so tall is because they’re exploiting the workers while the government subsidizes the investment.

    But come on. In Manhattan, the government interferes just as much, but on the OPPOSITE end. They don’t WANT you to build them tall. They don’t want you to make them great. There are height restrictions all over Manhattan, in the Village, in Hell’s Kitchen, etc. I don’t care that Dubai is doing it – more power to them. But I do want our government to stop its interference. And there’s plenty of demand for living space here in Manhattan. So I reiterate: the bigger, the better.

  12. #12 |  mynameis |  July 14th, 2008 at 8:55 am

    They can build a skyscraper as tall as the moon if they want, I will not be visiting Dubai. I won’t even change planes there. They imprisoned a man changing planes at the airport for four years, for having 0.003 grams of cannabis stuck in the tread of his shoe – not even visible to the naked eye. That could be you.

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