Skyscrapers and Superscrapers

Skyscraper. Superscraper, whatever they are going to call it, the Burj Dubai is a truly massive building set to open here in Dubai tomorrow (Jan 4, 2010). And when I say massive, I mean massive. Whenever I think of tall buildings that just baffle me I always think back to the World Trade Centers in NYC. They were 110 stories tall and they just looked mammoth when seen across the city's skyline. And then I think that this new tower has 169 floors plus the hypodermic needle that shoots up past that!

But then I read more about this "amazing feat of engineering" and

the spectacle that only Dubai will put around it's opening and I realize what a gigantic waste it actually is.

There is 300,000 sq. ft. of office space, none of which is even rented out yet. There are 1,440 apartments of various sizes, few of which

have been bought. The tower will consume millions of gallons of water a day and will need massive amounts of electricity a day.

What a waste.

Dubai doesn't need any more office buildings!! I feel like I am screaming this at the top of my lungs in a crowded room and nobody even blinks. In my area of the city alone, there must be 10-15 15-story office buildings that sit completely empty or close to it. Businesses are broke or fleeing the country, but no lets add massive amounts of space to that empty number.

Dubai doesn't need any more apartment

buildings!! Ditto to my above comment about screaming. Building after building sits empty. The World, this massively advertised housing project is a bunch of sand islands sitting vacant. The Palm sitting just off the Dubai coast, with its thousands of villas, sits half empty. But no, lets add thousands of more apartments.

Dubai doesn't need to consume anymore!! Dubai currently holds the honorable prize of having the highest per capita carbon footprint, i.e. we destroy the earth the fastest and the most out of any city in the world. We rely entirely on desalinated water (salt water), and the process to convert it to drinkable/usuable water is one of the most polluting around. There is absolutely no recycling program, so mounds of waste is simply dumped out in the desert.

None of this even touches on the fact that most of the laborers (if you can call them that, I prefer slaves) were treated inhumanly, paid minimal ($5 a day) and forced to work around the clock in 125 degree heat.

So all of this to say. Oooh and ahhh when you see the pictures of it this week, I sure did when I first saw it. But then I hope you think, as I have started to this week.....why? Why do we need something so unnecessary, so ridiculous, when the close to 2 billion dollars spent on it could have been put towards something so much more....... necessary.