Economics
Welcome to Dubai 2.0
The city of skyscrapers in the desert is coming of age. Its biggest challenge now is to keep growing.
Construction at the Expo 2020 world exhibition site in Dubai.
Photographer: Khushnum Bhandari/Bloomberg
Building by building, Sarah Al Amiri watched Dubai rise into the sky as she grew up in the city. She’s now a government minister overseeing the next stratospheric leap: a mission to Mars.
Much of the Arab world is mired in violence, poverty and unemployment, and yet in Dubai they’re busy working on sending a probe to the red planet within three years. It’s part of the latest package of eye-catching ambitions that include printing three-dimensional buildings, running the city on blockchain data technology and introducing hoverbikes and driverless drone taxis.