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Vice Blog

An update on Dubai's crumbling heaven

Dubai has built 200 skyscrapers in the past five years. For a tiny little spodge of sand in the gulf, this is a fairly high number of skyscrapers. Once dubbed the "world's largest building site", it contained – within a 30-mile perimeter – one fifth of the world's cranes. ONE FIFTH OF THE WORLD'S CRANES. However, as we mentioned a couple of months ago, it's all going tits up for them. When Gavin Haynes was in the town last week, he checked up on the skyscraper business.

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A while back, expatriate speculators rode in on its 0% tax rate (Sharia law forbids direct taxation), and made an absolute packet. For a while everyone was happy – the Sheik got his economic miracle . A bunch of Brits, Germans and South Africans turned up to "flip" houses up the property ladder – often trading places in the space of a day. They built seven-star Xanadus of bad taste like the artificial island of the Atlantis hotel resort. Then, the market fell off a cliff. In one day in October 2008, the world's biggest property bubble went pop, shedding 50% of its value. From a risk perspective, Dubai was Silicon Valley on steroids, and as rapidly as it expanded, it has since contracted. At $50 billion, Dubai's collective debts are larger than their GDP.

In 1996, Malaysia built the world's highest building – the Kuala Lumpur Towers. A year later, the "Asian tiger" economies tumbled like dominoes. Just as we arrived, they were putting the final touches to the new world's tallest building – the Burj Dubai. Once again, toooooo laaaaaate… Here it is though, finished and looking tall.

As their paper fortunes crumble before their eyes, the expats are fleeing in droves. With three million foreigners compared to under a million locals, the town is expecting to lose 8% of its population in 2009. By February of this year, authorities had already found 3,000 abandoned cars at the airport. Many were top-of-the-range, almost-new. Some had maxed-out credit cards in their gloveboxes. Others had notes taped to the windshield, apologising for, y'know, fleeing the country with massive debts and all that.

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Shitty as this might seem, you certainly don't want to go bankrupt in Dubai. If you bounce a cheque, they chuck you in jail. It's not a nice jail, either. It’s tough Sharia law jail.

The net effect of all this general implosion is that the place is now littered with half-finished skyscrapers, all waiting for some Zurich conglomerate to un-crunch itself enough to at least pick up where it left off. No place in the world right now is as fitting a tombstone to the folly of a global financial era as this mass burial ground for sky's-the-limits dreaming. Traipsing a couple of blocks one evening, we came across a whole fuckload.

Title: “Monument to the Unknown CEO”
Worth when planned: $247 million
Worth now: -$70 million
Potential use come the complete collapse of Dubai's economy: Abattoir for humans

Title: “The Two Amigos”
Value when planned: $367 million
Value now: Will swop for iPod, pair of trainers, old Blackberry
Potential use come the complete collapse of Dubai's economy: Prison for political prisoners who have transgressed the laws of half-cybernetic Kingbot

Title: “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”
Value when planned: $230 million
Value now: Free with every copy of Zoo magazine
Potential use come the complete collapse of Dubai's economy: Farm for the growth of edible types of mould

Title: "1001 Arabian Nightclubs"
Value when planned: $671 million
Value now: 140,000 air miles
Suggested post-apocalypse use: Decorative water feature

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Title: "Pawn In Your Game"
Value then: $567 million
Value now: Less than that
Suggested post-apocalypse use: Mass gallows

And yes, for every bigshot snorting back aircon at the Jumeirah lux-shopping megaplexes, there's an immigrant labourer washing his clothes in a bucket. Ho hum.

Title: “All Your Base Are Belong To Us”
Worth then: $17 billion
Worth now: Recently auctioned on Dubai version of Cash in the Attic
Use post-Moneygeddon: Tina Turner's personal Thunderdome

Basically, all these buildings are standing still. Very still.

GAVIN HAYNES