A coalition of 100 investors announced plans to build a "Chinese-controlled economic zone" populated by skyscrapers and luxury residences. Their new city will be in Kenya, but the goal is to "match the glamour of Dubai." What would motivate investors to go to the trouble of building a massive new city in a country other than their own? It’s pretty simple, actually.
Here in the U.S., the arrival of a new tunnel boring machine is huge news, warranting naming ceremonies
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All that cement and steel has to come from somewhere. In an amazing video by filmmaker Brandon Li, we get a chance to stroll through a world not many see: The dockyards of Dubai, where everything from food to construction materials arrive in the UAE city.
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Jeff Bezos has some new competition in the crazy drone delivery race. Dubai officials want to start using drones to deliver government documents by next year. And while Amazon’s drone delivery program probably won’t happen
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Rent at the 163-story Burj Khalifa doesn’t come cheap. While a one-bedroom "only" costs $55,000 a year (according to CNN), it’s the $25,000 service fee that really gets you. Now, a fight over these fees may force tenants to make the climb home on foot.
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Back in December when Amazon announced that it wanted to use drones to deliver packages to Prime users in only 30 minutes, many folks thought that sounded farfetched. Word has now surfaced from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that the government wants to trial its own delivery service in Dubai using drones.
The service would feature drone aircraft to deliver items to citizens such as driver’s licenses and other government documents. A prototype drone was unveiled this week and the UAE government plans to test the drone for six months.
The battery-powered quadrotor will carry packages in an upper cargo compartment. It also will have fingerprint scanners and retina scanners to ensure delivery to the correct person. The team behind the drones says they could cost as little as $1100(USD) each, and carry loads up to 3.3 pounds distances up to 1.86 miles.
Assuming a successful test in Dubai, the government wants to roll the drone aircraft out to the remainder of the country in the next year.
[via The National via The Verge]
It makes perfect sense. Burning buildings are very dangerous places for people to enter, so when there’s a fire that needs to be put out, why not recruit robots to do the dirty work?
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Hey there, thrill-seeker. Do you like altitude? Do you like views? Well, why not book a night in one of the tallest hotels on Earth? The tallest hotel in the U.S. opened up in Times Square this week, spurring us to take a peek at the tallest rentable rooms in the world.
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To celebrate the New Year, Dubai decided to break the Guinness World Record for world’s largest fireworks show. Because of course the world’s largest fireworks show would be in Dubai. They put the best show on every year. Might as well put on the biggest too. Dubai exploded over 500,000 fireworks in just 6 minutes centered mostly around the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest structure, for a spectacle that even surpasses Dubai’s ridiculous standards. It was amazing.
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Seven years from now, Dubai will welcome roughly 70 million tourists to its first World Expo, housed inside a gigantic, brand new, solar-powered city. But exactly how smart of an investment is an Expo, these days? And can economically volatile Dubai handle the $7 billion cost?
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