If You Build It

Towering over the desert-city landscape in Dubai, you can now find the world’s tallest building . At more than 1000 feet taller than its nearest rival, “Dubai Tower” as it was thought to be named before today, represents – well… it depends who  you ask.

A little known secret is that if you build it, they don’t always come.  There are more than a few building complexes in the world that remain largely empty.  Not surprisingly, these projects tend to involve the helping hand of governments. Whether they are in North Korea or Detroit, empty office buildings stand around the world as a testament to our inability to predict the future.

When any individual’s wealth is on the line, while he is not necessarily cautious, he wants to make sure he’s doing something reasonable – if he doesn’t, he won’t stay wealthy very long. It’s always a little bit easier to spend money on something unreasonable if you’re spending someone else’s money.

If nothing else, the tower is certainly a display of architectural prowess. But there is no doubt that the city of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates as a whole hope to showcase to the world that there is no longer any doubt of their permanent place in the global stage.

Today, we found out that the tower has been renamed. No longer the mundane “Dubai Tower”, it is now the “Khalifa Tower”, paying well-deserved tribute to UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan who indirectly lent the Emirate $6 billion dollars to pay off its debts. That’s a little steep for a tower to be named after you, but I’m sure the Sheikh couldn’t help but smile today.

If that sounds a little bit out of your price range, don’t feel too badly: apartments are  said to be available for a little over $1000 per square foot.  While no one can yet be sure whether Khalifa Tower will be a colossal success or a colossal failure, it sure seems to be on the path to becoming one or the other. With the centers of power incessantly gravitating away from the grip of Western Civilization, there’s no especially good reason other than schadenfreude to bet on failure.