Part Spiral Jetty, part real estate developer's wettest wet dream, the three Palmettes of Jevel Ali, Jumeirah and Deira will jut out from the coast of the United Arab Emirates, forming arboreal archipelagos that will soon provide the perfect setting for luxury hotels, villas, townhouses and a killer whale stadium!
At first it sounds too much of a dream, soon to be quashed early on in the game for lack of financial backers, but this is after all the UAE, home of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, or “Sheik Mo,” the builder-developer-ruler extraordinaire. No scheme is too monumental or too preposterous for someone so intent on transforming his desert state into a tourist mecca. The post-oil era is looming ahead; no one can afford to dismiss the lessons from post-phosphate Nauru. So in other words, construction continues unabated.
And if Michael Jackson is of any indication, which is unlikely but let's pretend nevertheless, it's only a matter of time before this emirate becomes the Monaco of the Persian Gulf (with a little dash of that Disneyland sensibility).
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