A climate-controlled city is Dubai's newest colossal project

They have the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper. They have the iconic Burj Al Arab, the iconic ship-shaped luxury hotel on a manmade island. They also have the Palm Islands, a man-made palm-shaped archipelago of mixed-use property. Naturally, the next step for the largest emirate of this small country on the Arabian Peninsula is to build the largest indoor ‘city’ in the world.

The emirate’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, expressed in a press release that the project, dubbed Mall of the World, is part of his plans to transform Dubai into “a cultural, tourist and economic hub for the two billion people living in the region around us.”

The project will house the world’s largest mall, largest indoor park, cultural theatres and wellness resorts with a capacity to host over 180 million visitors annually. So it’s not really a city, but close enough.

The mall will occupy 8 million square feet connected to 100 hotels and serviced apartment buildings with 20,000 hotel rooms. 3 million square feet is allocated for the wellness district.

For recreation, the cultural district will have theatres built around New York’s Broadway and shopping streets based on London’s Oxford Street.

All of this inside an enclosed, air-conditioned building that is intended to allow tourists to “be able to enjoy a week-long stay without the need to leave the city or use a car.”

The Independent reports that the Sheikh, who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates, owns the company responsible for the development, Dubai Holding.

Though details of the timeframe and the cost of the project are yet to be released, it is expected that the development will be Dubai’s main focus at the UAE World Expo trade fair in 2020.

For a better chance at visualizing the project's proportions, view the rest of the infographic from Dubai Holding here.

Earlier this month, my colleague and I presented a session to a group of civil engineers and transportation agencies about the tech trends in the AEC space. Along with advice on how to prepare your plan for controlled collaboration, we also talked through some practical use cases. One such use case was especially interesting, as it outlined a challenge not unfamiliar to government agencies who are contemplating the leap from paper to digital processes: how to securely migrate workflows.

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