DUBAI NOW AND THEN ...
... STORY OF A CITY FOREVER YOUNG
In memory of our beloved European Class that will be cancelled next year we wanted to leave a part of our class of 5 ème Euro 2016 in the bloggosphere.
Maélian Gaillard, Sami Kali and Simon Guzec are happy to invite you for a virtual visit of Dubai by using this blog.
We will show you Dubai, the most important city of the United Arab Emirates from a historic point of view, trying to show you how this city cropped up all over the place.
We will post links that you can use for more information or films an so on...
We will discover with you pictures of several places of Dubai, as they are now and as they were at the time of their creation a few decades ago. First we will show you Sheikh Zayed road because it is the symbol of the development of several emirates. It has always been the main road of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the departure point of modernization. Then we will talk about Dubai airport and its incredible expansion over the past decades.We will finish our travel with a presentation of the Palm Jumeirah, an amazing man-made island.
SHEIKH ZAYED ROAD
all about the story of Sheikh Zayed road
This road didn't exist in 1971. The general name is E11 road, it is a highway and the longest road in the emirates. It begins in Abu Dhabi and ends in Ras Al-Khaimah. Though E11 is the common name it has different names depending on the emirate. For the part included in Dubai the name is Sheikh Zayed Road.
In order to have a better idea about what this road looks like let's have a look to some pictures:
On both sides of this street, you can see hundreds of buildings, all very high and of modern design. Some of them are very famous, like the Burj Khalifa which is the highest tower of the world with its 828 meters (2717 feet).
more about Burj Khalifa
There are also many other buildings along Sheikh Zayed road, as you can see in the link Building listThis is also the place for big malls,which are some gigantic commercial centers like "The Mall Of the Emirates" or "Dubai mall"
See what they look like!!! : MOE picture
When you see those pictures you can hardly imagine that in 1990, the only thing that you could see was a very basic road in the middle of a desert. It's also crazy to have the idea to build such a city because we all wonder how to get water, energy, food and so on. The temperature is very high all year long and up to 55 degrees during the summer.
In fact, the road that we presented to you above looked exactly like this in 1990 :
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| Sheikh Zayed road in 1990 |
DUBAI AIRPORT
Dubai International Airport is now the biggest airport of the UAE, the number 1 international airport in the world and one of the most important hubs accommodating planes from the smallest to the largest which fly to and from most countries around the planet.
In 2015, over 78 millions passengers went through this airport !
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| Airport in 2015 |
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| Airport 2015 |
It is hard to imagine that the biggest airport in the world did not exist 60 years ago. Dubai first airport opened in 1960. It was a very small airport only accepting a few planes on a sand runway. How far it has come !
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| Old airport 1960 |
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| Old airport 1960 |
you can find more information by clicking on this link
THE PALM JUMEIRAH
The Palm Jumeirah is an artificial island, one of the three islands called the Palm Islands (Palm Jumeirah, Palm Jebel Ali and Palm Deira) which have extended into the Persian Gulf. The Palm Jumeirah is the smallest. It has been constructed from 2001 to 2007 and was in 2007 the world's largest artificial island. Many luxurious houses and hotels are located on the Palm and over 26 000 people are living on it.
link to Google Map
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| Overview wide of Palm Islands 2015 |
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| Overview of Palm Jumeirah 2015 |
Let's go to back a few years, in 2001 when there was only the sea.
Starting from nothing, huge boats came and dropped incredible amounts of sand until a whole island with amazing shapes was created. Here are a few pictures of the boats hard at work:
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| Palm Jumeirah in construction |
Once completed the island housed many constructions, symbols of luxury. Many famous people and stars have a house on the island.
The great hotel resort and adventure water park Atlantis is the most representative of the ambitions of the architects and Sheikhs.
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| Atlantis : Hotel, water park, restaurants and shops |
Bonus content, some of our favorite before/after pictures:
