In the "post-epidemic era", many industries have been greatly impacted and ushered in an unprecedented cold winter. In many famous tourist attractions, groups of unfinished buildings abandoned by developers can be seen everywhere. A wave sweeping the world will leave countless "souvenirs" like this.
However, few people may know what the world's largest unfinished project is. It was the product of the global financial crisis in 2008. After the strong winds of depression blew by, a huge project in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was completely stranded.
When it comes to Dubai , the first thing that everyone thinks of is inevitably the rich, oil, and gold.
This is indeed the case. Even the real estate developers in Dubai have different ideas from other counterparts. Others want to build high-rise buildings from the ground, but they want to use human power to create miracles.
This is the famous "The World Islands", also known as World Island , a super giant artificial island group completely planned and built by humans.
is arranged according to the shapes of the world's continents, with all public facilities, transportation facilities, and entertainment facilities available, embodying the power of money and human technological power to the extreme.
As the most populous and prosperous city in the world, the United Arab Emirates , Dubai's status is extremely special. It is probably difficult for anyone to imagine that in the 1960s, it was still a poor and backward small fishing village.
Perhaps most people think that Dubai's wealth comes from oil. This is indeed true. In the earliest days, it was the discovery of oil that allowed the city to rise rapidly.
But the oil reserves here are not high. Later, the biggest pillars supporting Dubai's economy were tourism and real estate.
This is probably easy to understand. After all, there are too many rich people in the world, and who of them doesn't want to lie on the soft beach and sunbathe in the sea breeze while on vacation, with the large palm trees gently swaying behind them?
And if they are very satisfied, it would be very reasonable to buy a luxury villa here for emergencies.
Tens of millions of tourists come here from all over the world every year. As long as you have enough wealth, you can enjoy the wonderful sunshine all year round, the blue sea, and the top-notch accommodation, food, drink, and entertainment.
For a tourist city, it is necessary to constantly attract the attention of the outside world, but what Dubai has done is even more jaw-dropping - from the earliest "seven-star" Burj Al Arab Hotel in the world to the world's tallest building later built Burj Khalifa , the famous "Fast and Furious 7" filming location Etihad Tower, etc.
Their goal seems to have always been to create the "best in the world" product, and what they want is to make the gimmick extremely exaggerated.
After 2000, Dubai's real estate showed a trend of crazy development. Many people expressed concerns about this phenomenon. However, in the words of a local real estate businessman: "As long as we build the houses, people will naturally come."
For Dubai, whose per capita GDP was as high as 35,000 US dollars in 2006, it is not difficult to build real estate on a large scale.
However, the area of this coastal city is not large, only about 4,000 square kilometers, which is not even as large as some counties in my country. Excessive development has rapidly reduced the available land.
In the end, even if many high-rise buildings were built, there would still be no room for them.
This problem seems almost unsolvable, but people in Dubai don’t think so, because it seems that there is nothing that money cannot solve. After all,
started from a small fishing village, and the tourism industry was built on the back of the endless sea. If you don’t have land, just build it yourself and carve out a piece of land along the coast of the Persian Gulf .
This is the world-famous " Palm Island " in Dubai. I don't know which genius came up with this idea.
But at that time, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the 10th Chief of the Emirate of Dubai , quickly took a fancy to this plan and was ready to start planning and construction immediately.
Palm Island is just a general name. To be precise, they are planning to build three large artificial islands, namely Palm Jumeirah , Palm Jebel Ali , and Dirah Artificial Island.
The first two show the image of a palm tree, and the blueprint of World Island is even grander. When viewed from the sky, it looks like a miniature version of the world map. All seven continents and four oceans are clearly visible, which is a wonder.
is described in the developer's own heroic words, that is: "We are going to put the world map in Dubai."
This huge and arduous task was handed over to the world's largest real estate company - Nasdaq, a subsidiary of Dubai World Group. Heller Corporation was responsible for the construction.
Although modern technology has developed rapidly, this kind of land reclamation project is not simple, not to mention that the island is very large. When completed, it will even extend Dubai's coastline out of thin air for more than 700 meters. kilometer.
There is no doubt that the implementation of such a large project is amazing. The construction unit used a lot of dredging boats to spray massive amounts of sand and rocks into the sea.
In the plan, when all three islands are completed, a total of more than 300 million cubic meters of sand and 31 million tons of stone will be consumed. The "Jingwei Reclamation" in our ancient Chinese legend can be said to be embodied here in Dubai. Incisively and vividly.
It is actually very difficult to shape these sand and stones into the shape of palm trees because it is difficult for dredgers to do it so accurately.
In order to achieve perfect results, Dubai also called the world's only private remote sensing satellite "Ikonos". The
satellite was launched in 1999. It was developed by Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries on the basis of Soviet satellite technology. Its high resolution was the highest in the world at that time, even surpassing that of the United States.
In the overall plan of Nakhle Company, it plans to build residences that can accommodate 55,000 people, 19,000 apartments and more than 100 luxury hotels on these islands.
In addition, there are ports, theme parks, restaurants, large supermarkets, etc., and even more eye-catching are a hotel that is said to be completely underwater, and the tallest building in the world...
It is worth mentioning that this super construction project sent out invitations to top construction companies and teams around the world in the early stages. If you can participate in it, you will not only make a lot of US dollars, but also benefit the company's capabilities and image. , so the bidding was naturally extremely fierce.
On July 16, 2003, China Construction Corporation won the bid for a 913-unit villa project in Dubai's Palm Island, with a winning price of US$160 million. It was one of China Construction's largest overseas projects at the time.
Finally, after more than four years of concerted efforts by architects and workers, China Construction successfully completed all tasks on the Palm Jumeirah, further making the reputation of Made in China world-renowned.
Yes, among the three island groups, the Palm Jumeirah was the first to be completed, even though the construction seemed so exaggerated before.
However, after it was completed, it was still favored by countless wealthy people. It can even be said that the sales were very popular. Some islands were even bought before they were completed.
Among the buyers there are many top celebrities and superstars such as Beckham couple, Brad and Angelina Jolie couple. Even those dense ordinary private residences were sold out in a short time, which is even more determined. the developer’s determination.
As the project continues to advance, the largest and most stunning "World Island" has finally begun construction. The creativity of this World Island can be described as extremely bold and clever. It is made up of more than 300 small islands of different sizes. Complete, a small world map appears on the sea, with the shapes of the continents clearly visible. Not only that,
also "has" representative cities in various countries, including New York in the United States, Paris in France, London in the United Kingdom, and Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong in China.
One thing to understand is that these islands, which are priced from 15 million to 50 million US dollars, have to pay such a high fee, so they must also have an equivalent experience, the most important of which is freedom.
Freedom means that you have the highest power. You have an island and all kinds of equipment on the island. But if you feel that it is not enough, or you have some other novel ideas, you can implement them at will.
For example, many buyers later built symbolic buildings of their own countries on their own islands:
Virgin Atlantic boss Richard Branson once wore a suit with a British flag pattern all over it. Taking photos on the "British" island, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld filled the entire island with fashion elements, and a company called Opulence Holdings bought the "Somali" island.
and plans to reshape it into a seahorse shape so residents can play golf on their balconies.
In the "Chinese Islands", Shanghai Island has been bought by a Chinese billionaire, who plans to rebuild Shanghai's skyline on the island and build a replica of the Oriental Pearl Tower.
This is the uniqueness of World Island. This kind of freedom makes many people spend a lot of money and flock to it, because the rich hope that they can be unrestricted to the greatest extent and have a completely different experience and enjoyment from ordinary people. World Island is completely satisfied Got this.
Originally, this was such a good deal. It not only exposed Dubai's wealth to the whole world, but also created a new territory for the country. It could also make a lot of money through the sale, but only It can be said that people are not as good as God, and some accidents are unpredictable.
In 2008, starting from the United States, an unprecedented financial crisis swept the world. At this time, the World Island was about to be completely completed, and almost all major companies and employees were preparing to hold celebration parties.
A few days after the results, the "Dubai World" company responsible for the general project was exposed to be burdened with a sky-high debt of 60 billion US dollars, and was caught in a turmoil and on the verge of bankruptcy.
Other developers naturally could not escape and were implicated one after another. Construction contracts evaporated, capital chains were broken, leaving a pile of bankrupt companies, lawsuits and unpaid debts. The entire plan collapsed due to financial difficulties. More than 60% of
World Island was quickly sold. The Irish investor O'Dolan who had previously bought " Ireland Island " was also exposed to be in deep financial crisis and eventually committed suicide at home.
Moreover, the island has just been built at this time, and no commercial development has been done on it. It is a completely deserted island. However, because everyone is in danger, there is no way to talk about development, so it has been shelved here. It has also created a world record for Dubai - "the world's largest unfinished project".
Not long after, according to NASA photos taken from the International Space Station in space showed that as sea levels rose , the beaches of the World Island were almost submerged in the sea, and the communication channels between the islands , and due to neglect of repairs over the years, it has long been blocked by silt.
This situation may even cause many islands to gradually move closer to the center and sink in the future. The so-called "adding insult to injury" will make the originally bleak sales fall to the bottom.
As time went by, around 2011, the world turned its attention back here again. Joseph Creditienst, the boss of the American "Open" real estate company, had previously owned three small islands, and now he has waved his hand again. They bought a lot and then concentrated on developing this island group into a project called "Heart of Europe".
He invested a lot of assets to build this project, among which the "Floating Seahorse" villa group is very eye-catching.
This kind of villa has three floors in total. The second and third floors are on the sea and the bottom floor is underwater. Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, you can look around at the colorful coral reefs and swimming fish on the seabed. There is also a weather control system on the street. If you want to control it artificially Climate change on islands.
Joseph's methods greatly encouraged other "island owners", and gradually revitalized the entire world's island groups. Many people began to invest in the development and construction of the islands again.
No one knows what the future of World Island, once known as the "eighth wonder of the world," will be like. It may even sink directly to the bottom of the sea due to natural factors, or it may float steadily on the sea outside the Persian Gulf and become The world's largest leisure resort, whether the man-made island can last long depends on the consideration of time.
