Burj Khalifa;World's Tallest Skyscraper
- Thread starter McLaren
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- bramturismo
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Alcohol isn't illegal in Dubai, that'd be bad for tourism. Dubai's fairly relaxed as far as usual Muslim rules go. A few of the other Emirates still ban it though đź‘Ť
@ Keef - Yep, Dubai is pretty much one large building site, but it isn't as inaccessible as you'd think. For one thing it's a bigger place than it looks in pictures, the sense of scale is reduced from looking at how massive the Burj is. Their main trouble at the moment is the fact that many places are running out of money, so a lot of the big projects going on are kind of grinding to a halt.
It's very much the opposite of uninhabited though, the road network isn't nearly up to the task of coping with the massive volume of vehicles that originate from the massive increase in population the Emirates have had over the past few decades.
The images you see are also pretty much always from the business district. The place is very elongated, sitting along the coast, but it's rather more "finished" around the hotels and the malls.
I booked flights today to go over again in Easter, so it'll be interesting to see if anything's changed since last time I went.
- 6,009
- Austin, Texas
- D-Nitrate / GTP_DNitrate
I thought the same thing.
Here is a nice comp chart:
While Dubai doesn't have to worry about it, there has been some research done to suggest that depending on their location, some of these mega skyscrappers could actually cause earthquakes.
In fact, there was a report a few years ago that Taipei 101 was believed to have exerted so much down force that it openned up an ancient fault line which prior to the building going up, had been dorment and now they have had several earth quakes along that fault directly below the building.
Back in 2002, during it's construction the two main construction cranes fell 60 stories during that massive 6.8 earthquake, and while the building itself held up brilliantly, the same could not be said for much of the buildings along the fault line.
- 5,768
- Anoka, MN
Cripes, that's almost a half-mile tall!
- 5,481
- Seattle, WA
- RykonZero
Wow. Just, wow. That thing totally owns Taipei 101. And the CN tower. I feel fear...
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They just had to go and trump our beloved antenna, didn't they? 
Keef
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Just to clarify for people who don't know, the Sears Tower's height doesn't include it's non-structural antennas. The spears on the top of the Petronas Towers, though, are structural. They put them up there so they could beat the Sears Tower without actually making the floors that high. But even so, the Petronas Towers are higher, and that graph is wrong.
"...1450 feet and 7 inches, which (according to convention) rounds up to 1451 feet..."
But I get the point. The Burj is a big mother, lol.
Keef
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And the building wasn't even finished yet. Me? I'd wait until it's done. I'd have a helicopter pilot friend race me to the highest surface of the building, hover there for just a second while I get off, and then I'd jump off really quick with one of those wing suits and aim for a waiting getaway car. I haven't figured out how we'd get out of the country. Base jumping isn't that big a crime, is it?
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boiltheocean
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Pretty much. Allow me to furnish the thread with a few pics that I took in the last week. I just got back from Dubai today. Been up for 18-and-a-bit hours as I type
I took these images from reasonably close to the Burj - just across an artificial lake (the name of which escapes me, but contains Dubai Fountain) next to the Burj and Dubai Mall. It looks just massive, in a way that Sears Tower didn't when I visited it a couple of years back. The Burj dwarfs everything around it, wheras Sears just looked merely big, next to other slightly less-big buildings.
This last picture is indistinct (a symptom of the constant haze Dubai finds itself in) but gives you a good idea of the relative scale next to other buildings. None of which are exactly small...
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To be honest, it's hard to define a "local". Most people you interact with, such as those in restaurants, museums etc are from all around the world - the majority from the middle east and far east, of course, but not necessarily from the UAE. As for locals wandering around in shopping centres etc, I've had no trouble.
The only trouble you do have is on the roads, where without wishing to make this sound like a slur on the whole population, they're all mental. Drivers in the UK can be pretty stupid at times, and when I went to the States the drivers on the freeways around LA were a bit crazy, but in the UAE a large proportion are either dangerous, incompetent or both.
This is perhaps understandable of a nation which has had such rapid development in the last quarter century and where such a large proportion of people have suddenly had the income to afford bigger and quicker cars, in a country where the road network isn't nearly up to coping with the quantity of traffic. Still, this doesn't excuse people darting between the cars in 60mph traffic like they're filming Fast and the Furious, changing lanes for absolutely no reason, speeding up to rows of stationary traffic and braking hard at the last minute, crashing red lights, double-parking in lanes on a roundabout and all the other stuff you see all the time out there.
I consider myself a fairly courteous driver but in a week of driving in the UAE I quickly realised that courtesy means you end up being pushed off the road. You have to adopt a very much offensive style of driving as opposed to the defensive style you get taught in driving lessons.
But yeah, driving aside, I had no trouble with any locals at all. It's so multicultural that you don't even feel like a minority if you aren't Arabic.
The only trouble you do have is on the roads, where without wishing to make this sound like a slur on the whole population, they're all mental. Drivers in the UK can be pretty stupid at times, and when I went to the States the drivers on the freeways around LA were a bit crazy, but in the UAE a large proportion are either dangerous, incompetent or both.
This is perhaps understandable of a nation which has had such rapid development in the last quarter century and where such a large proportion of people have suddenly had the income to afford bigger and quicker cars, in a country where the road network isn't nearly up to coping with the quantity of traffic. Still, this doesn't excuse people darting between the cars in 60mph traffic like they're filming Fast and the Furious, changing lanes for absolutely no reason, speeding up to rows of stationary traffic and braking hard at the last minute, crashing red lights, double-parking in lanes on a roundabout and all the other stuff you see all the time out there.
I consider myself a fairly courteous driver but in a week of driving in the UAE I quickly realised that courtesy means you end up being pushed off the road. You have to adopt a very much offensive style of driving as opposed to the defensive style you get taught in driving lessons.
But yeah, driving aside, I had no trouble with any locals at all. It's so multicultural that you don't even feel like a minority if you aren't Arabic.
- 5,768
- Anoka, MN
I wonder how far you can see from the top!
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I think this photo posted earlier in the thread gives a reasonable indication:
How far is O'Hare away from Sears? 20 miles? 25? It's visible a fair bit before the edge of the horizon even on a hazy day, and the Burj has 50 more storeys. Wouldn't be surprised if on a very clear day you could see maybe 60 miles from the top of the Burj? The land is very flat in the UAE too.
(And with that, I'm off to bed. Been up for over 24 hours now since waking up in the UAE yesterday morning...)
