From desert to mega city: How Dubai became one of the richest cities in the world

From desert to mega city: How Dubai became one of the richest cities in the world

Anyone who’s ever seen a photo of Dubai knows how quickly the city has turned desert into metropolis. And anyone who’s ever stepped foot in the city knows that photos don’t do justice to the massive scale of the city’s ambition. It’s fascinating how a desert city with a population of 12,000 people now boasts of over 2.1 Million residents with 92% of its population foreigners who live and work at Dubai.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, Dubai took a strategic decision to emerge as a major international-quality tourism destination. Investments in tourism infrastructure have paid off handsomely over the years.

Dubai is now a city that boasts unmatchable hotels, remarkable architecture and world-class entertainment and sporting events. The beautiful Burj Al Arab hotel presiding over the coastline of Jumeira beach is the world's only hotel with a seven star rating.

From desert to mega city: How Dubai became one of the richest cities in the world

The Emirates Towers are one of the many structures that remind us of the commercial confidence in a city that expands at a remarkable rate. Standing 350 meters high, the office tower is the tallest building in the Middle East and Europe.

Where it all started.

Human settlements in the area now known as Dubai dates back as far as 3,000 BC, but the formation of a built-up city is an extremely recent development. Prior to the 1960s, Dubai remained a relatively small-scale civilization, built on fishing and pearl diving for centuries and sustained by re-exports in the early 20th century.

From the 1770s up until the late 1930s, the pearl industry was the main source of income in the Trucial States, which today make up the United Arab Emirates. For residents of the sleepy fishing villages of the Persian Gulf, pearl diving was their humble beginning in trade, but it set the scene for something much larger later on.

However, in 1966, the discovery of oil in Dubai marked a turning point in its history. A few years later, in 1969, the first shipment of oil away from Dubai took place and the export of its natural resources soon triggered a huge upturn in the economy. The economic boom, coupled with the formation of the United Arab Emirates in 1971, kick started a period of major development. The move away from oil led to a boost in tourism, and the little oil Dubai eventually discovered in 1966 went towards building the city we know today.

How Dubai became the richest city in the world

Being as part of Emirates, but with relative independence over its economy, Dubai continued to diversify its revenue stream throughout the 1980s in order to compete with Abu Dhabi’s growing profit from the oil industry. The city established its first free zone in 1985: Jafza, the Jebel Ali Free Zone, which at 52 square kilometers (20 square miles) is the largest in the world. This became a big attraction for global businesses, which today take advantage of the emirate’s 30 free zones that offer tax breaks, custom duty benefits and lack of restrictions for foreign owners.

In the past decades, Dubai has now become known for its successful building projects, including the Burj Al Arab, the world's tallest freestanding hotel, The Palm Islands, a construction of three artificial islands in the shape of the date palm, on which residential and commercial property will be built, The World Islands, and Burj Khalifa, which is the world's tallest man-made structure. Dubai now produces between 50,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil per day, which is roughly 11,000 m3. This is enough to fill 4.4 Olympic swimming pools. Even at this, about 95% of Dubai’s Gross Domestic Product is not oil-based. So far oil has accounted for less than one percent of Dubai’s GDP and tourism to produce 20% of the GDP. These figures explain why Dubai has had to become a more dynamic and diversified economy in order to survive the decay of fossil fuels.

Even though Dubai's economy was built on the back of the oil industry, most of the city's banking and financial centers headquartered in the port area and service industries got largely affected as Dubai's property market faced a major downturn somewhere during 2008-2009 as a result of the slowing economic climate. Most of its ongoing projects along with the jobs of the expatriates got massively affected. Also, it was made public that Emaar had approximately $70 billion credits and the state of Dubai additional $10 billion while holding estimated $350 billion in real estate assets.

In addition to this, Dubai is also an international IT hub that serves service industries such as Finance and IT. The Dubai Internet City, along with Dubai Media City forms the TECOM (Dubai Technology, Electronic Commerce and Media Free Zone Authority), which is an enclave who houses well-known IT firms such as EMC Corporation, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Oracle Corporation and IBM, and media organizations such as BBC, MBC, CNN, Reuters and Sky News.

In the recent times tourism has emerged as an important aspect to boost the country’s economy. Based on its air traffic in 2013, Dubai was the 7th most visited countries in the world and has also surfaced as the shopping capital of the Middle East, thanks to its diverse souks and innumerable shopping centers. Dubai is aptly referred to as the ‘City of gold’, as the city houses nearly 250 gold shops.

Dubai has won the bid to host the most awaited Expo 2020, which will give an amazing boost to its economy, and is expected to create over 270,000 jobs. There are a thousand and one reasons why you need to move to Dubai before 2020. One of which is that it is an expat friendly country with an unmatchable economy, favorable for careers and businesses to thrive. For everyone willing to work at Dubai, WorkAtDubai is a recruitment agency looking to match potential job seekers from anywhere in the world to potential employers in Dubai. Visit www.workatdubai.com for more information.

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Source: Legit.ng

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