The rulers of the United Arab Emirates have insane amounts of money to spend. Thanks to everyone’s thirst for oil, they've been on a construction spree unlike any the world has ever seen for such a small country, investing in one ambitious infrastructure project after another. At one point, 24 percent of all the world’s construction cranes we in Dubai. Unfortunately, that was before the 2008-2009 global financial meltdown, which led to much of the investment in the city drying up faster than the water on somebody who just got out of the pool at the Burj Khalifa. But the government insists that many of these projects have simply been delayed, and are putting their money where their mouth is with the recent approval of a $32 billion expansion of Dubai’s Al Maktoum International Airport that will break ground by the end of 2014. When complete, it’ll suddenly have the capacity to become the busiest airport in the world in both total passengers - at 220 million a year - and total cargo of 12 million annual tonnes of goods that can move through it--that’s almost 3 times more than what takes off from the runways of the world’s current leader, Hong Kong’s International Airport. It’s terminals will able to hold 100 of the massive new Airbus A380’s that are over two-thirds of a football field long and cost $300 million a pop. The UAE’s Emirates airline already owns more of those planes than anyone else in the world. It’s the largest airline in the Middle East and will eventually move into the Al Maktoum airport to help jump start activity. The government’s plan is for the airfield to be the heartbeat of a city within the larger city of Dubai called World Central, which the UAE thinks will be home to 900,000 residents in the near future. The airport also hopes to be the central hub for the emerging Middle East, North African, and South Asian economic bloc known as MENASA. But time will tell whether the Shaikh’s vision for Dubai actually becomes a reality, or fades like some vicious mirage.
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