If you are fed up with touring ancient ruins and museums filled with fossil dinosaurs, and you want to experience the brilliance of the sci-fi movies’ smart future, choose Dubai. Here you do not have to wander narrow streets that witnessed medieval intrigues and love affairs. This is the city of the future.
In Dubai, you can do a separate tour dedicated to information technology. Tech lovers will not cease to admire the intricacies of advanced innovations used here, and everyone else will enjoy the comfort and entertainment of the highest class.
Perhaps the Arabs have not yet outstripped the Japanese and have not replaced humans with robots, but they seem to have gained speed by the day. I will not speak of the latest achievements of the United Arab Emirates in the fields of space exploration and genetic engineering here. Instead, I will describe the technical miracles that I have experienced firsthand as a regular visitor of this region.
Heat? What heat?
In the UAE, driving is not the only way to stay cool. Walking and even waiting for public transport is also cool, literally. In Dubai, you cannot but marvel at public transport stops. Just imagine: the air is thick, and you need to spend some time waiting for the bus; instead of an expected stuffy box with a hot bench, there is a cosy room with air conditioning and Wi-Fi. And this is not to mention the screens with the exact routes schedule and a TV with advertising. Remembering the heat outside you think: “I would live here!”
You can also enjoy a walk in the cool. Inside only, however. Any and all indoor premises, including underground passages, are air-conditioned here. And this is not a luxury but a harsh necessity.
For the first thing you feel, barely stepping off the plane is not just the heat, but the intense humidity. The UAE is built on the dunes. Its cities are located on the border of the desert and the sea. Creating here such a powerful infrastructure for life, business and leisure took an extraordinary idea, massive investments, and a miracle of technology advancement. If there was no air conditioning, the cities would melt and burn to the ground, quite literally. Therefore, engineers designed the houses with vertical cooling systems powered by strong pumps. These structures pump water up the perimeter of the buildings to cool them. Millions of liters of water are used annually to provide a comfortable living for Dubai citizens. By the way, among the projects of endless construction is the whole cooled city “under the dome” with its own overarching air-conditioning system. The size of this still nameless city with an artificial microclimate will be twice the area of Monaco.
Almost a Hyperloop: Unmanned Sightseeing
I was looking forward to trying the local subway — dubaimetro.eu. The metro in Dubai is famous for operating without drivers! A trip along the red line may well pass for an unguided tour (you immediately get a general idea of what the city looks like) — it’s great when the subway cars are not going underground, but 10–15 meters above the ground! Red subway line stretches along the sea and across the city, from the airport and almost to the border with Abu Dhabi, passing by the best city attractions, including the world’s highest high-rise building Burj Khalifa (burjkhalifa.ae) and the Dubai Marina district.
I decided to enjoy the subway to the full and bought a “golden card”. It gives you access to riding in the first car almost at the driver’s seat (my childhood dream came true!). It is exciting when you go at a speed of 100 km/ h and watch a postmodern vista of skyscrapers unfold against the backdrop of the shining Persian Gulf. However, note that the “golden card” is twice as expensive as a usual pass. Without the special card, you risk getting fined if you enter the first car. However, you can always hurry to retreat to another car. Be careful: the second car after the special “golden” section is reserved for women and children. So, if you are neither a woman nor a child, take a seat in the next, third car. Arabs do not like it when their laws are violated.
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About tour guides
Crowds of onlookers with selfie-sticks and a guide trying to shout down on them all? In Dubai, you can forget this nonsense. People of the 21st century can organize an informative mini-voyage around the city on their own. To do so, download the “Al-Fahidi Architectural Tour” and “Metro Moments” apps on play.google.com (also available from apple.com/ios/app-store) and enjoy a fascinating tour of the historical areas of the city for free, along with audio and GPS navigation. The application determines your location by automatically switching from one location to another and showing the directions to the nearby historical sights and popular locations that are worth visiting. The only restriction is limited language support: the apps only run in English, German, and Chinese. For those who want to see the city quickly is a great option to book a tour on must2go.com — it is a personal travel assistant with 24/7 online support.
Manmade islands
I have already said that the very existence of the city is a miracle of technology and its standard of living even more so. After all, the place is in the lifeless Arabian desert. The power of human labour and intellect has created an amazing luxurious oasis from scratch. Take the famous Palms alone! Have you seen children build sand castles? The engineers did something of the kind in the Persian Gulf. They took stone and mined sand from the bottom of the sea and poured it back into the sea until an artificial archipelago called the Palm Islands with a total area of more than 60 sq. km rose up. It is the size of more than 800 football fields. The grandiose project includes the Palm Jumeirah, the Palm Jebel Ali and the Palm Deira, as well as the World and the Universe archipelagos. Palm Jumeirah is connected to the mainland by a 300-meter bridge, and its “crescent” is connected to the “top” by an underwater tunnel. The islands host villas, fashionable neighbourhoods, shopping centers, restaurants, bungalows, and other attributes of luxurious living. After the construction of all these islands, the Dubai beach line has increased by 520 km, which was very useful — after all, the city’s own coastline is very short, only 70 km, and there were quite a few people willing to buy property on the shore.
Skiing in the desert
Well, if you had enough of the Arab heat and feel nostalgic for the winter, there’s more than air conditioners to seek. It turns out that in the middle of the desert there is also a real ski resort. Of course, it seems off to consider skiing on a trip to a hot Arab country, but this miracle of technology is worth mentioning. To begin with, Ski Dubai is one of the world’s largest indoor ski resorts. Fifteen hundred people can visit the resort at the same time. The temperature in the complex ranges from -6 to +1 degrees Celsius thanks to the cooling system. There is a range of activities for the fans of winter sports of any skill level: from beginners to professionals of extreme sports, for skiers and snowboarders … The visitors who come with children can be sure to get the kids engaged — there are snow caves, tunnels, and sledding facilities, as well as climbing walls and a cinema. Ski Dubai is located in the Mall of the Emirates, the shopping Centre that beats the Vatican in size.
A giant oasis
In Dubai, 40 thousand date palms were planted on the sand dunes. Needless to say, the desert has no fertile soil, therefore the life support system for green plants needs to be fully artificial. Each palm tree costs the city $50 per day for the individual water supply. In Dubai, there is even a record-holding flower park considered the largest in the world. Dubai Miracle Garden, aka “the Miracle Garden” or “Multicolored Oasis” has become a real embodiment of innovation. There are over 45 million different types of flowers of various hues, imported from different parts of the world. Houses, walls, animals and fairytale characters made of flowers, masterpieces of landscape design created by the pros from Europe and the USA — I personally cannot remember any park alike in the world. The park uses modern watering technologies and underground drip irrigation, which saves up to 75% of water and electricity.
Very soon another skyscraper will appear in the area of Dubai Marina. It will rotate! Each of its floors will be rotating. I hope to visit the city again and see myself this miracle of technology completed. Moreover, the opening of the “Museum of the Future” is scheduled for 2019. But of course, it needs to be in Dubai, where else?
