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Comment by seydor | Hacker News Reader

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

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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

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.

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