Dubai's Climate-Controlled Dome City Is a Dystopia Waiting To Happen 265
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Dubai is building "the world's first climate-controlled city" — it's a 4.3 mile pedestrian mall that will be covered with a retractable dome to provide its shoppers with air conditioning in the summer heat. The Mall of the World, as it's called, will become the sort of spectacular, over-the-top attraction Dubai is known for. Shortly after, it will probably become an equally spectacular real-world dystopia.
By sectioning off a 3-million-square-foot portion of the city with an air conditioned dome, Dubai is dropping one of the most tangible partitions between the haves and the have nots of the modern era—the 100 hotels and apartment complexes inside the attraction will be cool, comfortable, and nestled into a entertainment-filled, if macabre, consumer paradise."
By sectioning off a 3-million-square-foot portion of the city with an air conditioned dome, Dubai is dropping one of the most tangible partitions between the haves and the have nots of the modern era—the 100 hotels and apartment complexes inside the attraction will be cool, comfortable, and nestled into a entertainment-filled, if macabre, consumer paradise."
Life on Mars? (Score:5, Interesting)
Being the largest climate controlled dome of its kind, perhaps the engineering "lessons learned" could be applicable to creating a self-sustaining space colony -- one of the chief challenges being climate control. ..or else, I've just been playing too much Kerbal Space Program and reading too much Heinlein;)
World's largest mall: Occupying 8 million sq ft (Score:4, Interesting)
A big shopping center - sounds like hell on earth! I just can't understand the obsession with shopping, once you have your clothes & stuff just leave and do something interesting.
Re:Life on Mars? (Score:1, Interesting)
No one will EVER live in a permanent space colony. Sorry.
This fantasy was promoted in an age where achieving terrestrial dominance through orbital trajectory of warheads was under intense and competitive development. It did its job.
Rockwell rode on the tail-end of this era, for the final boondoggle of the US Shuttle Program, in the 1970's. You won't see anything like that again.
Fetishising nature + this is after all a desert! (Score:1, Interesting)
Someone sounds jealous...
Jealousy and other issues as well. The Vice article seems to have strong opinions as to what sort of conditions other people may live in. It just states that it is dystopian without much evidence. And as to the poor in Dubai, they are already richer than many of their compatriots back home (many are immigrant workers) and given time and further economic development they no doubt will get richer themselves. The United Arab Emirates are the one most forward thinking areas in the Middle East. They are slowly going through what the West did in the reformation and enlightenment. Of course it will take time but I am sure they will be much more progressive societies in 300 years.
/or prevent men there from impregnating them, you really cannot complain. I am always amazed at people who are shocked when they hear others moralize about women giving birth when they are very poor. They pontificate about every women having the 'right' to have children. Often these same people then later complain about the environmental consequences of such children when they reach adulthood.)
Then there is the issue that some people simply fetishise nature and assume that everything 'natural' must be beautiful. It simply is not the case. Most 'natural' places are ugly. The ones that we photograph are the elegant and interesting ones. A lot of the time those people who enjoy extreme temperatures and who are in excellent shape imagine that rest of humanity has the same take on their surroundings. It's so easy to forget that without keeping out the heat or cold many people would be miserable - particular in an extremely hot desert which is where Dubai is located. The heat is simply oppressive. And of course by allowing this dome, it means people can venture out of their homes and get more exercise - something that is otherwise not possible.
I can imagine that some people would say that humans should not be living there to begin with. To which I answer: someone gave birth to them and once there here on planet earth they have to live somewhere. And most people living in the middle east don't have much choice as to where to live particularly if they don’t want to live in absolute poverty. (So unless you want to stop Bangladeshi and Pakistani mothers from getting pregnant and
I know someone who works on this kind of stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
I know someone who works on this kind of stuff.
He works on theme parks, recently getting hired (within his company) to fix mistakes and problems with them, in Dubai and the surrounding area. His take is repeatedly that they don't know how to do quality-control there. Their projects SOUND amazing, but they skimp on the essentials and end up with disastrous results much of the time. He believes this is a mess waiting to happen, given the area's track record, but isn't involved in the project.
modpoints (Score:3, Interesting)
I have modpoints but I'm still waiting for some of you fucktards to figure out you're talking about a 50 year old reactor design
and post instead about, you know, a modern design, or even a, gasp, non weaponizeable design, that has a self limiting reaction and doesn't need water to cool it.
apparently nobody has any idea, and your liberal/green propqganda lies are going to propagate for yet another generation of idiocrats because no one stands in your way to correct you for me to mod up