Cancelled - Dubai's Palm Islands

dubai is an interesting city it's a lavish metropolis on the coast of a desert with a seemingly never-ending pipeline of project ideas and money to fund them there have of course been some insane mega projects proposed built and being built but one of the most significant and awe-inspiring is what developers have been doing on their coastline so significant and identifiable that it can even be spotted from space terraforming and creating massive purposeful islands some in the shape of palms other crescents galaxies and even the shape of our continents all of which would cater to the rich having luxury hotels apartments and single-family homes built upon them but these master plans from the early 2000s only partially became a reality some mostly finished but never built upon my name is jake and in this episode of cancelled we're going to take a look at some of the most expensive and largely failed mega projects ever conceived these are the islands of dubai dubai was coming off decades of prosperous oil extraction creating incredible wealth amongst many by the late 90s and early 2000s though there was a shift in how the city should and could prosper into the future mainly in the form of tourism much of the city's waterfront had already been developed by this point so an idea was proposed to just create more of it hundreds of new beachfront kilometers several developers including the state-owned nikhil properties began proposing some truly insane concepts they wanted to build what essentially would be several cities out on the water in the form of man-made land reclamation not just blobs of sand either uniquely shaped islands starting with the palm jumeirah which itself would be the largest man-made island ever it's of course shaped as a palm leaf and would feature a large and lavish base filled with commercial properties a large tower and a monorail system single-family homes would populate the radiating palm leafs and surrounding the whole development would be a circular outer ring which would act as the breakwater wall and host five-star hotels and condos this was just the beginning though as palm jebel ali would be an even larger version of the first then would come the world a series of small islands which from a distance resemble the shape of the continents the lower half of this archipelago would also eventually be accompanied by the universe another string of large islands palm deera would be the last of the palm-shaped islands with this one being the largest of all three it would feature the same developments as the others and a large base protruding out of the existing coastline finally there would be the dubai maritime city and the waterfront the largest of all six developments its multi-island crescent shape would almost wrap around palm jebel alley so these planes were ambitious to say the least as the entire project would take decades to fully build out and cost tens of billions of dollars for each island in fact just the first palm was estimated to cost around 10 billion dollars developers claimed they had conducted over 100 feasibility studies and with no time to waste they got started on the absolutely colossal project the first of the bunch palm jumeirah began construction in 2001. millions of cubic meters of sand and dirt were dredged from the shallow coastal sea floor and began shaping the masses for the palm it was a lengthy and expensive effort which ever so slightly saw the creation of their master plan well at least a part of it with work continuing along nicely at palm jumeirah its even larger sibling the palm jebel ali also began construction in 2003. despite the real world unproven demand the developers and by extension the government were clearly committed spending additional billions of dollars in construction the world also began construction that year with the creation of the small islands to create the iconic shape with three megaprojects all being formed in tandem the first the palm jumeirah was actually nearing completion with infrastructure being set in place and structures being built upon the uniquely shaped land masses the first businesses and residences began moving in around a year after its original opening date in 2006. the final price tag for palm jumeirah was around 12 billion dollars work continued along at palm jebel ali and the world the developer nakeel also began the land reclamation for the even larger projects of palm diera and the dubai waterfront these two projects were just getting started though with a small portion of their master plan actually being filled in the world was nearly finished and palm jebel ali had its land finished with underground infrastructure work underway but it was now 2008 and dubai was hit hard by the global financial crisis demand particularly in the real estate sector had violently decreased and the desire for new ultra luxury waterfront real estate had plummeted investor funding had almost certainly dried up and we could see the hesitancy and examples like dubailand with the american company universal going to build universal studios they of course canceled their project out of economic fears and it was the topic of a past cancelled episode suddenly dubai's rapid and ultra-expensive lust for expansion was being built with little to no demand palm jumeirah already had people living on it full time and outside companies were already nearing completion so as the world and country struggled on the poorly timed grand opening of the palm was held in november 2008. it signified the opening of the entire project along with the atlantis hotel putting on a spectacular fireworks display and throwing a 30 million dollar party something which seemed pretty impressive for an equally extraordinary construction effort but also one that seemed out of touch with the realities of the market the stark contrast would continue on if you drive just 30 kilometers northwest to the much larger palm jebel ali there you would find nothing with the striking decrease in demand for real estate and likely no buyers to help offset the costs the primary developer nikhil began to pump the brakes everything was put on hold including the projects that were in the middle of being dredged infrastructure work was well underway at palm jebel ali while a preview center was constructed at the world on a lonely island nikhil was forced to offer investors their money back as work had ceased to progress while this was initially thought to be temporary it would later turn out to be much more permanent but the situation wasn't that great over at the finished palm jumeirah the promised population there was set to be around 120 000 people however in reality it's around half that for those more conscious about the environment you may also be thinking on how these developments had affected marine life indeed constructing millions of cubic meters of new land from nothing had major implications it had forever changed the marine landscape of dubai's coast erosion has also become a concern in the long term since the islands of course are made of sand it was thought that the effects of the rock-filled breakwater wall would essentially keep the water stagnated and cause little damage but in reality it hasn't gone that smoothly building at the world also proved to be difficult as many private developments would have to build out an economically viable project on a small not very private plot of land which is also self-sustaining doing so during an economic real estate crisis proved to be too much of a task for the majority of owners who bought islands pretty much everything had continued to sit that way even up until now aside from palm jumeirah the nearly finished islands of the world and palm jebel ali are in a nearly abandoned state that's especially true for jebel ali just passed dubai's main shipping port is a large development built to increase the demand from the busy shoreline the only problem is there's nothing to build from on the existing shoreline nikhil's ambitious plans for a shore side development never happen and from the sky the canals for the never built development can clearly be seen along with the fact that it's just a barren desert over there so is the vast palm development which essentially is sitting abandoned stretching seven kilometers into the persian gulf nothing has happened with palm jebel ali some infrastructure like supports for large roadway bridges along with foundations and even half-built homes and apartment buildings dot the unusual landscape but now it just sits abandoned and wide open as a bizarre and vast desolate landscape really that whole side of the city is largely undeveloped the palm was constructed for city growth that just never happened as for the even larger concepts well those have been officially cancelled this includes the dubai waterfront which once again from the sky you can make out the stone-filled outlines of the massive islands the closest of which already had some sand filling them in the rest is now abandoned with no concrete plans for the future as for palm diera well it too was partially constructed work was halted as around a quarter of the land had already been filled in in 2013 the developers decided to keep the project but only used the land which had already been reclaimed now rebranding it into the diera islands really this whole project is truly insane on its scope and the fact that it moved ahead so quickly clearly there was no foresight for any downturns in the economy and by that fact it showed how delicate it all was out of everything we looked at today only one of these mega projects sort of worked out one out of six with tens of billions of dollars infested into this palm jumeirah is a work of art from an engineering sense but even 20 years later there are still open plots of land and multi-million dollar developments that don't even look that great plus there are statements from nasa claiming their satellite observations show the palm is slowly sinking year by year nakil denies these claims however but only so much can mitigate the damage of climate change the world is finally getting back on track for development most notably with the heart of europe a luxury resort set to occupy several of the islands however work on it has been extremely slow and only a fraction of the archipelago has been developed the other projects have either been cancelled or indefinitely postponed at this rate it'll likely take decades for the islands to be fully built out some smaller developments have popped up particularly on the diera islands in 2021 nikhil claimed they would restart development at the long dormant palm jebel ali but nothing substantial has happened just yet all of this makes me think though this is objectively beachfront property yes but property that's not exactly private having a mansion on the palm almost guarantees your beach will look directly onto someone else's the same is true even more so at the world which essentially right now is just a barren landscape full of very close together islands some of which are being sold for tens to even hundreds of millions of dollars it just doesn't make much sense to me and i don't really see the appeal i'm not sure what about this makes it that luxurious at least at the prices that are being marketed i suppose others are seeing the flaws as well given the troubled history of this whole development and the apparent lack of any new interest it certainly looks cool from above but at ground level it's just not very functional from an ecological perspective it's been disastrous and the same could be said from the economic impact truthfully i don't understand how they could ever possibly make back their money from islands that cost upwards of 10 billion dollars but maybe that wasn't even the idea maybe regardless of any negative impacts it would have dubai wanted to show off what they could do and make a statement well they certainly did but probably not the statement they were intending to make it's staggering and kind of infuriating how much money was just dumped into the persian gulf all for the grand division that was in part at least ultimately cancelled my name is jake and thank you very much for watching [Music] so [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 2,299,199

Keywords:

Id: tdExZj3JBc0

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/MechaLeary]

Zero mention of the migrant labor required in the UAE that's riddled with human rights violations and often compared to modern slavery.

[u/barca14h]

This had to be one of the dumbest ideas to spend money on.

[u/blocker1980]

That was some incoherent rambling

[u/kirtanpatelr]

When I was young I saw a documentary on the dubai islands on National Geographic and I thought “wow some parts of the world are so advanced and doing mind blowing things” but now as an adult I understand the reality of it and not so enthusiastic anymore.

[u/No-Self-Edit]

Based on the comments I thought I’d see a repetitive and uninformative video, I was ready to hate watch, but it was actually interesting, making me want to see more. God how fucking hot are those beaches and that shallow boiling water anyway? I love beaches but are there any trees or sea life? Reefs? What exactly did it do to the ecology?

[u/bigchuckdeezy]

I used to be super into Bright Sun Films but they’ve really taken a massive dip in quality with their growth.

[u/ExistentialistMonkey]

Oil sheikhs spending billions to build islands that climate change will eventually swallow.

[u/Fi3br]

slave labor gets shit done.
wonder why he skipped that in the video?

[u/Golfnpickle]

Slave labor, oppression of women’s rights and women, human trafficking, 9/11 money backers, murders & the list goes on & on.