The Ain Dubai, the world’s largest broken Ferris wheel | Hacker News Reader

The Ain Dubai, the world’s largest broken Ferris wheel

washingtonpost.com

39 pointsStratoscope47 comments

https://wapo.st/3pEt4TA (good for two weeks from now)

I bet that is has very little to do with safety, or even economics. Middle east megaprojects serve royal purposes. They give jobs to the sons of elite families. (Yes, in this context I do mean only the male children.) It keeps them engaged as "developers" doing things like soliciting bids on giant buildings or launching media campaigns, which is much less of a threat than them stewing at home or in the desert thinking up ways to overthrow kings. But once a project is built and the ribbons cut, the cool-factor ebbs away pretty fast. Every rich guy wants to be the first to build or do something big on day one. Few hang around to run the theme park come days two through four hundred. So the big thing is built. Time to tear it down and start building the next project. The process is the purpose and the goal.

The problem is that tearing it down would be a huge embarrassment to everyone involved, especially if it was closed due to safety. Leaving it SBNO indefinitely makes it an eyesore, but lets them avoid assigning blame like a demolition would force them to.

I don't quite understand, though - is there a certain length it needs to exist before it can be torn down without judgement? The article mentions the Dubai Pearl, which broke ground in the early oughts finally being demolished.

Admittedly, I don't know as much about the individual emirates as I could, but Dubai seems like the most reckless of the bunch. The Palm, the (World) Islands, it seems like they're just throwing shit at a wall to see what sticks. I wouldn't touch anything there with a ten foot pole, investment-wise.

>> certain length it needs to exist before it can be torn down without judgement?

It comes down for scrap the day after the last creditor gives up trying to get a return on their investment. So long as a foreign investor is holding onto their note, unwilling to sell for pennies on the dollar, the project will remain in perpetual limbo. But eventually all the property rights will be bought back by whatever prince started the cycle. Then it can be pulled down and a new eyesore commissioned.

Sounds unsurprisingly similar to the promotion incentives at a Alphabet.

Precisely.

The whole point of these massive projects in Dubai, Qatar, Saudi, etc... is effectively make-work for those who might have the ability to one day overthrow the king....and to make it appear to the populace at large that yes, the ruling families are living super lavishly, but they are* trying to improve the country as a whole to attract FDI, international companies (and universities), etc.. all to improve the country's international image.

*I mean that as loosely as possible. Most middle eastern kings don't give a damn about the general population as long as their power isn't threatened.

Disclaimer: my dad was recruited by the Neom project in Saudi but turned it down. We have a family friend who was high up in the project and said it was effectively a massive pay day for consultants who did nothing besides wax the egos of Saudi princes who want to look good. The project is ambitious as hell and may or may not ever get finished. All that said, the Saudi princes who want to look good don't actually do anything. Much like how the military is staffed by sons of elite families, they aren't educated to actually do what is necessary, because they grew up with beyond-fuck-you-money and never actually had to do any work.

Suddenly those Pyramids and the Sphinx make a lot more sense... and they're still lying around a few thousand years later.

It isn't just the middle east. Follow UK history, or any other royal system, and you will find the primary job of the King is always to appease, flatter, suppress, or otherwise occupy the elite families that might one day challenge his. It continues to the present day. All those garden parties. All those property development schemes. All those royal charities run by Oxbridge grads. All those offshore tax havens. Royal families today play the same games in Europe as they do in the middle east. It isn't healthy, but the system has survived the centuries.

It's not even remotely on the same scale as the Saudis though. British monarchy is wealthy but compared to the Saudi wealth they are paupers.

A UK Peer recently commented that the best way to own property in the UK was to have a relative who was a friend of William the Conqueror. The royal system and its impacts are alive and well today. It is often cited as a reason behind the insane property prices in the UK, with long-held family land restricted the development necessary to meaningfully drop living costs.

>> Just 0.3% of the population – 160,000 families – own two thirds of the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/high-h...

The difference is that in the Middle East most of the wealth comes from the land because of oil reserves. In the UK, owning land makes lots of money, but there are plenty of industries that are not based on extracting resources.

> Most middle eastern kings don't give a damn about the general population as long as their power isn't threatened.

Most people living comfortably don't give a damn about the general population as long as their way of life isn't threatened.

> The project is ambitious as hell and may or may not ever get finished

Finished? Hell, I'll be surprised if they get started on it in any substantive way.

The This Machine Kills and Trash Future podcasts have had a lot of great coverage on Neom.

Maybe I'll eat my words, but I highly doubt it or any of it's surrounding projects will ever be completed.

>Middle east megaprojects serve royal purposes. They give jobs to the sons of elite families. (Yes, in this context I do mean only the male children.) It keeps them engaged as "developers" doing things like soliciting bids on giant buildings or launching media campaigns, which is much less of a threat than them stewing at home or in the desert thinking up ways to overthrow kings.

This is more or less my take on "The Line" project in Saudi Arabia. A literal giant hole in the ground to serve as an excuse to shovel endless amounts of untracked money into. It is never intended to be finished or even seriously built.

This sounds pretty familiar, minus the scheming princes part. Mega-construction projects involve so much money that I think it's the preferred method for many politicians to funnel money to themselves and their friends. And people cheer on them thinking it will bring jobs or increase their property values.

Wanton environmental destruction is usually a bonus, but who cares about that.

A colleague built a building in Abu Dhabi about five years ago. He is still trying get a street address assigned to the building. Navigation instead works based on landmarks. So is someone asks the address you say the 'white building behind the BMW dealership'. I have a feeling that's why no one wants to teardown landmarks.

There is one interesting detail:

“ Germany’s Technical Inspection Association, or TUV, confirmed that it was involved in the Ain’s construction but had withdrawn its certification for the structure. The group, which tests and provides independent safety certifications for a variety of technical systems, gave no further comment, saying it was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. ”

That really says it. No public info about what the problem is, though.

Here's the designer's LinkedIn.[1]

[1] https://ae.linkedin.com/in/darren-brooke-88299130

> more steel than the Eiffel Tower

I hate to nitpick, but the Eiffel Tower is made of iron, not steel. Doubtless, some of the remodels have probably introduced steel, but not in the main structural part.

If we're nitpicking, that fact doesn't make the first statement untrue.

Anything that is interesting about that in significance perhaps?

Long story short it’s still a mystery why it’s broken and what caused it.

Some say it is because of equipment failure, ground settlement, wind vibrations, and/or some combination of the three. But no one knows for sure.

I suspect that somebody knows for sure, they just aren't announcing it to the press.

I suspect the problem could be multifaceted and they are continuing to explore the situation. And of course stamp out responsibility. Public relations and communication is not a concept in this part of the world. Which is why we won’t be learning anything until the problem is completely gone.

Interesting timing for me. I just read about Malaya buildings 3 and 4, which have been declared unsafe, and everybody got a 30 day notice bc the only option is to demolish

"“I think the sheikhs wouldn’t want to move it, so as not to lose face,” said Oleg, a Bluewaters resident. “It is after all, a landmark, so I imagine it will remain here.”"

I don't' get this. Leaving it up as a monument to their engineering failure is better than taking it down and replacing it with something new?

Downvotes not necessary. This is a legitimate question. And the answer is, yes, leaving it up is better than taking it down. Not losing face publicly is their most primal urge. Americans are far more pragmatic and willing to admit a failure. This whole face-saving thing might as well be a culture from another planet if you were raised in America.

Who cares. The whole of Dubai is a hodge-podge of "structures" to make the local rich people feel accomplished and tourists who view it as a giant mix of disneyland and vegas.

I actually wonder how those beachgoers can stand the july temperatures, it must be 40-45C now?

Once the novelty of supercar leases and fancy restaurants wears of, they are going to have to ramp up the prostitution to keep bringing in rich wannabes

As opposed to where? At least they're trying, rest of the world has not build meaningfully either in quite a long time. Maybe only China

Nothing that is architecturally meaningful has been built in dubai. the heyday of architecture and capitalist megastructures is long gone, even though some interesting stuff is being built here and there, including china. Attention has shifted away from buildings and cities (i guess because people travel so much more) and into the virtual world.

I was surprised how well it is working.

It's probably a less than 6 hour flight for 2/3 or 3/4 of the world population.

> At least they're trying, rest of the world has not build meaningfully either in quite a long time.

Some of the rest of the world builds meaningful societies/economies. Ones that won't explode into civil war the moment that the firehose of oil is tapped out.

I understand that parts of the Middle East are trying to do that as well, but it's not clear what the effort results in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen

Thanks for posting the Baltica! I didnt know about that and Im excited now

> rest of the world has not build meaningfully

Is a giant (broken) ferris wheel "building meaningfully"?

Why not? Testing limits of engineering on our planet. Surely, some contribution was made to human knowledge by building/funding the wheel.

That's a part of Dubai - designed to bring in the money - but take a trip around Karama, Bur Dubai, or even Jumeirah and tell me that's the case.

tall big structures, nice looking hotel at the edge of the palm, but nothing feels organic and everything is safe, very safe, primarily because workers and poor can't afford to live there so they live in the another emirate.

Tbh the old town is nothing impressive either, plus i don't think you meet locals there

What is meaningful about this?

Take a look at those areas I referred to in my previous comment and you'll see that your image of Dubai is but one part of the wider picture. Ask yourself if the West End and the City are all of London or if Beverly Hills is all of LA?

Plenty of people live in Karama and Bur Dubai (i.e. not in Sharjah), for example, who are not especially rich - those parts of Dubai are in fact the oldest and most populous parts of Dubai! Visit those places - don't just go to the usual tourist traps of the Palm, the Marina, and Downtown!

been to old dubai, it s basically touristy, has an unhealthy obsession with gold jewellery, and i m not sure if the people there are locals or know local traditions.

my guess is , if there s going to be something culturally interesting arising near dubai, it will arise in sharjah where immigrants live

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