Dubai Is A Parody Of The 21st Century

when we hear the word dubai most of us picture towering skyscrapers immense wealth police with lamborghinis seven star hotels with the absolute cream of society inside them also the palm islands the world islands the burj khalifa the burj burjal arab futuristic symbols of incredible wealth and so in light of all that i'm here to make the case that dubai the emirates and the gulf countries in general are one of the worst places on the planet now this is a rather bold claim i realize but it's one that i can substantiate fully so let's take a look at what's really behind the glitz and glamour the true face of dubai and the gulf countries to better understand what's going on in a place like dubai first let's talk about romania [Music] in the decades following world war ii bukash the capital came to face the same problem as many eastern european capitals did at the time as urbanization increased and huge residential areas were built out the need arose for new high-capacity public transportation and so nikola chochasku the dictator of romania by candidate gave out the order to construct a metro line and so the engineers created a line proposal and presented it to him and then ceosku was like no i will design the route personally and so the former shoemaker assistant who also called himself the genius of the carpathians i am not making this up sat down and redesigned the entire metro line to have it run along the river underneath yes along but nikola chochesko's wife elena ciaosku a former textile factory worker also got her fair share of planning reportedly when the planners presented the final version of the metro line to the chochester couple elena chorchesko reportedly asked why the metro would stop inside the inner city at piata romana inquiring what kind of factories there are the planners told her there aren't any factories but there is the bukras university of economics where there are lots of students hearing that elena chaucesque reportedly said students they've gotten fat they grew up belly they should walk no station at ravana let them walk and so since nikola chorchesku added nothing to that and nobody else dared to oppose his wife the station was axed from the plans but of course everyone outside of the dictator power couple knew that this was [ __ ] stupid and so the engineers having enough foresight decided to build the station in secret banking on the fact that they would need to build a station there anyway due to future public pressure and they were correct the end result was this ridiculous and dangerously narrow station since the engineers couldn't build a normal station hall since they had to disguise their little secret project as regular tunnel boring and so the moral of the story is smooth brain dictator plus construction equals dumb [ __ ] and boy what a perfect segue this is to the video's actual subject dubai [Music] the city of dubai is a [ __ ] joke it's a tasteless parody of everything wrong with modern humanity and so why do i say that let's go through it shall we now in my video about skyscrapers i have already talked about the butch khalifa it's a big dumb tower of glass and steel stuck in the middle of the desert serving no other purpose than a petrodollar fuel dick measuring contest and the building even has its own poem about itself like seriously how pretentious can you get i am the life force of collective aspirations and the aesthetic union of many cultures i seriously dream stupid emotions and what the hell is that noise oh no it's the poop trucks yeah did you know that the burj khalifa isn't connected to its sewage system so every single day a huge line of poop trucks have to queue up next to the building and suck out all the poop so amar's ambition and dubai's shining dream included the world's tallest skyscraper but not a sewer system and besides i've talked about this before in the skyscrapers video there's actually not much point to building a skyscraper like the only situation where it might make sense is when you're physically out of space but trust me dubai does not have this problem which ties into the next suspects [Music] dubai's palm islands are the og symbols of the city the construction of the first one the palm jumeirah started in 2001 if you can believe that and according to google's satellite images it's still not finished it's still getting built out and just for good measure let's take a look at what they actually built here i mean these things do look nice from space but what are they really from up close and personal well the stem is an eight-lane urban freeway and the leaves are just individual suburban streets oh and there's also a monorail in the middle oh and between the point and nakil mall there are no stations so then how do people living on the leaves get on this thing well it's a rhetorical question of course just like the real suburbs in america this thing was built around cars and the second poem the jebe alley will be more the same and then there are the world islands of course which are just a complex of tiny islands for the ultra rich and their villas and oh my god this looks outright post-apocalyptic jesus christ oh and there's a third bomb under construction if the two weren't enough oh and by the way the sand they use for the palms is not desert sand they can't use it because the grains are too big instead they have to get the sand from the sea floor and they achieved this by sucking it up with these big tanker ships and also annihilating acres of marine life in a process oh and by the way these palm islands were built on top of natural coral reefs which they just ended up basically burying oh and according to nasa measurements all these islands are sinking at a rate of five millimeters per year and by the way have you heard about this thing called the rising sea levels according to the environment agency abu dhabi under the most severe climate change scenario nearly all of dubai including the palm islands would be under water alright so let me get this straight you had all the money and power in the world to create anything and you have paid money to annihilate a coral reef to build a sinking suburb on top of it perhaps i treated you too harshly and here's the kicker about these islands that's right i'm still not done why build them on the sea to begin with i mean you have the desert you have all the space you will ever need so why not just build the palms inverted into the land you know having the actual body of the palm not out of sand but out of water it would look just as impressive from space and it wouldn't even demolish all the aquatic life hang on a second they did do something like this already just below the palm tree and oh no these are american style suburbs oh man i can't believe it they took the worst urbanism practices from the us and they implemented it one to one and we actually have all the circles of urbanism hell in here copy-paste housing cul-de-sacs giant highways coming through the area no public transportation a 12 lane arterial road jesus christ and so this will be our segway to dubai's urbanism in general is just complete bonkers it's kind of its own little bubble really a strange little rich people's dystopia in the desert take a look at this arrangement two sections of skyscrapers separated by a 20-something lane freeway and behind it a bunch of cul-de-sac suburbs and golf courses is this strange mixture between futurama and evil los angeles and this just makes me feel so frustrated because all that money and all that power they could have done so much more and so much better than this the way i understand it the main motive behind building all this flashy stuff was to try and increase tourism to help the emirates economy transition away from oil revenues which is you know fair enough but then why not build something truly unique something that isn't just a big dumb tower of glass and steel or a couple dozen suburban streets on sinking sandbanks or gigantic malls or golf courses imagine a city with full-on historic arabic golden eater architecture with modern elements ok this is concept art from diablo 3 but you get the idea i have seen skyscrapers malls suburbs urban freeways or golf courses before what i haven't seen is a historical or at least historicist arab city that would be a great way of spending all those petrol dollars or at least a better way i would say and that might even attract a more quality crowd instead of the oligarchs trust fund babies and noverish idiots okay that's a bit unfair but dubai right now is not exactly a haven of intellectualism so to speak by the way did you know that only 10 percent of the emirates population is actually emirati the other 90 being immigrants and expats well actually they're all immigrants it's just that white people came up with this word expat so they don't have to call themselves immigrants abroad because that word is reserved for brown people speaking of which and this right here is my biggest problem with dubai the emirates and the gulf states in general all that luxury wealth and opulence you see all around you in dubai rests on a mountain of human tragedies poor people from third world countries such as india pakistan and bangladesh are lured in by work agencies promising high wages and stable employment people take loans from friends and family so they can cover the cost of their travel and work visa usually more than two thousand dollars despite emirati law requiring the companies to pay for those upon arrival workers passports are often confiscated essentially trapping them inside the country workers are forced to work up to 12-hour shifts up to seven days a week for 175 dollars per month on average wager years are common many workers not receiving money for months on end to quote from a human rights watch report the impact on workers whose wages are withheld for even one month is very serious they immediately fall into arrears on the death day of recruiting agencies in their home countries they incur additional interest and they are unable to send money home for their families who depend on their income earning the emirates in some cases the known payment of wages means that workers do not have money to buy food or basic goods and end up borrowing money just to survive the coveyed epidemic only made things worse that and the oil price crashing left many workers jobless consequently many were abandoned by their former employers they now spend their days in half abandoned worker camps on the outskirts of the city only volunteers and their food donations standing between them and starvation a guardian article quotes a construction worker called hassan he says guests on and off visit and give something but when nobody comes we have to starve we have nothing all this just a few kilometers away from the seven star hotels the world's tallest skyscraper the world's biggest mall and the golf courses for rich foreigners according to the estimates of the commonwealth human rights initiative between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 10 indian workers died in gulf countries every single day and these are just the indians in addition to that a jezebel article goes on to say that at least two indians commit suicide every single week in the emirates a number they say that is simultaneously both shocking yet unsurprising they show photos of the accommodation the workers have to endure unfit even for animals a harsh contrast to instagram's parallel universe they call this system modern slavery and i'm afraid they are correct this and the previously mentioned issues but especially this is why i hate the emirates and especially [ __ ] hate dubai the city of dubai is a [ __ ] joke one that's unusually cruel it's a twisted parody of everything wrong with modern humanity i'll leave you with a poem from berthold brecht written in 1935 titled questions from a worker who reads who built thieves of the seven gates in the books you will read the names of kings did the kings haul up the lumps of rock and babylon many times demolished who raised it up so many times in what houses of gold glittering lima did its builders live where the evening that the great wall of china was finished did the masons go great room is full of triumphal arches who erected them over whom did the caesar's triumph had byzantium much raised in song only palaces for its inhabitants even in fabled atlantis the night that the ocean engulfed it the drowning still cried out for their slaves the young alexander conquered india was he alone caesar defeated the gauls did he not even have a cook with him philip of spain wept when his armada went down was he the only one to weep frederick the second won the seven years war who else won it every page of victory who cooked the feast for the victors every 10 years a great man who paid the bill so many reports so many questions thank you for watching uh i'm sorry the video took such a dark journey in the end but as i was looking up stuff for dubai for the video i kept encountering more and more just alarming the [ __ ] up information like jesus christ anyway thank you for watching once again and please like and subscribe if you haven't already and do check out my patreon tiers link in the description and i'll see you next time

Channel: Adam Something

Views: 10,960,429

Keywords: dubai, uae, emirates, arab, arabic, burj khalifa, skyscraper, palm, palm island, urban planning, city planning, urbanism, slavery

Id: tJuqe6sre2I

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/strafer_]

seems like perfect place for people with a lot of money but not a lot of substance

[u/BeefPieSoup]

I've been there twice for several weeks (definitely not by choice) and I 100% agree. It's almost a surreal feeling you get there, like you're seeing a caricature of wealth disparity and wastefulness.

Doha has basically the same vibe.

[u/ggxy]

Dubai is absolute dogshit. It's just a giant network of highways connecting suburbs and skyscrapers. That includes the palm, which is literally just rows of suburban streets with a massive highway in the middle. WTF is the point? The city is horrible for walking around, there is no sense of community or culture, nothing really to see or do apart from walking around in malls or engaging in one of the many gimmicky and overpriced activities they have there like indoor skiing which you won't do regularly anyway. Also the people living there suck, it attracts a certain type of expat who prioritizes extra income over all else, which is why they go there. There is no local population you can mingle with, the emiratis keep to themselves and are very few in numbers anyway.

[u/Downvote_me_so_hard]

I grew up in Abu Dhabi in the mid 90's, at that time Dubai was the City Centre, ASD, Hard Rock Cafe, and Planet Hollywood. It took about an hour to an hour in a half to actually get to the heart of Dubai. Now it takes like what, 25 mins.

Anyways, I have been saying this for years. Dubai is the fakest, shittiest city you'll ever go to. It's just a bunch of malls and hotels. Unlike most cities that have a history of being built, Dubai was built pretty much over night.

Back in my day, the UAE was considered a third world country. A place where a 5 year old could buy a pack of cigarettes, and a 13 year old could alter a photocopy of their passport to go drinking. It was a simpler time. I went back to AD in 2016 to show my wife where I grew up, and it was nothing like how I remembered. IMHO it all went downhill after Sheikh Zayed died.

[u/Enchanted_Pickaxe]

Wasn’t this posted like a few weeks ago?

[u/Generic_comment1]

Whenever I hear something about Dubai, I will always remember Peggy Hill's take on Pheonix, AZ

"This city should not exist — it is a monument to man's arrogance"

[u/mastah-yoda]

My brother in law was on a business trip there and told me that while it looks shiny on the outside, from the inside it's horrible. E.g. live wires sticking out in hotels, super poor quality faucets, etc...

[u/[deleted]]

Wait. This video isn't considered politics, but the video about Qatar's FIFA is?

[u/Taxi-Driver]

Dubai is basically one giant airport.