Dubai: Why 4 Million People Live in a Desert With Almost No Oil

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Dubai sits in one of the hottest deserts on Earth, gets about ten centimetres of rain a year, and oil is only about one percent of its economy. Sixty years ago it was a pearl-diving town of fewer than sixty thousand people. Today it has the tallest building on Earth and the busiest airport for international passengers. So why isn't Dubai poor? A tax-free port in 1901, a creek dredged with borrowed money, a giant port built before anyone needed it, an airline that started with two leased planes, and the night Abu Dhabi had to bail it out.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:43 1901–1930s: The pearl town
01:45 1958–1960s: The creek
02:40 1966–1985: A little oil
03:57 1985–2010: Planes and towers
05:13 2008–2009: Almost broke
06:03 Today: Who builds Dubai
07:09 The verdict

Sources: Britannica; Dubai Statistics Center; Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism; DP World; Emirates Group; ACI World; U.S. EIA; IMF; Reuters; BBC; Human Rights Watch; UAE Federal Tax Authority. Full source list on request.

Could another city copy Dubai today? Tell us in the comments.

CREDITS
Map data: Natural Earth (public domain). Elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (Mapzen). Icons: Microsoft Fluent Emoji (MIT). Flags: flagcdn (public domain).
Music: "Pamgaea", "Hustle", "Local Forecast", "Investigations", "Sneaky Snitch", "Thinking Music" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
Classical music: "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (Edvard Grieg), "Danse Macabre" (Camille Saint-Saens), "Gymnopedie No 2" (Erik Satie), "Gymnopedie No 1" (Erik Satie), "Prelude in C, BWV 846" (J. S. Bach), "Egmont Overture" (Ludwig van Beethoven), "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" (J. S. Bach), performed by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

#economics #dubai #geography
Thumbnail photo: Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, IMF, Public domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sheik_Mohammed_bin_Rashid_Al_Maktoum.jpg)