Over the Top

What being on the 124th floor of Burj Khalifa told me about Dubai: bankruptcy was worth it.

Standing some 1,400 feet above ground, on the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa, I finally understood Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum. Dubai’s latest marvel is its ruler’s most expensive gamble. And despite the bad press, obvious financial stupidity and my pessimism, I had to admit that not everyone could have pulled off such a thing.

Dubai is the place I grew up in, the place my parents still call home. But over the years I’ve felt towards the city the same irritation I have for precocious children. At just about 40 years old, Dubai wasn’t grown up enough to be doing the things it was doing. Under its founder, the present ruler’s father, Sheikh Rashid bin Said al-Maktoum, this trading port was a tax, stress, and glitz-free place for adults and children. Everything changed in the late 90s.

In the past several months, much of the curiosity around the Burj (tower in Arabic) has revolved around whether the government had the money to finish the project. But it is complete, and like so much else here, it is an event management exercise. The ‘At The Top’ Experience allows people to visit the observation deck and ‘know at last what it is like to see the world from such a lofty height’. At those heights, the world simply gets smaller.

But what makes a trip to the 124th floor of the Burj worth an exclamation point is its vantage view of this overbuilt city. The Burj is part of a $20 billion Downtown Dubai project, which includes Dubai Mall, the world’s largest shopping centre; in its neighbourhood there are several townships built around manmade creeks, a race track, the city’s new financial centre, and many five-star hotels. None of it existed at the beginning of this decade.

Looking at his spanking new city from that viewpoint, I finally appreciated the audacity of the dream. No one else could have put borrowed billions to such fabulous use. For $1.5 billion, a government in love with superlatives built an edifice cluttered with extremes. At 828 metres, it is the tallest structure in the world, has the fastest elevators (ground to 124th floor in one minute), even the world’s highest swimming pool.
So what if the view from the top also includes the sandy remnants of The World project, the reportedly sinking seven-star Atlantis hotel, the deserted Palm villas, and shells of other unbaked projects?

Engineers alone cannot dream such things; it takes a man with a Howard Hughes-like madness to instigate them. And even if Dubai is eaten up by the desert it came out of, I should still be glad a man once created an adult Wonderland. And that I knew it like no other city in the world.

Burj KhalifaDubaitallest building