Cranes at the Business Bay construction site in Dubai. (Associated Press Photo by Kamran Jebreili)
Posted on 06/04/2008 1:32:04 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
One in every 4,500 people in the world lives in Dubai. Yet the emirate’s busy construction sector employs about one of every four construction cranes world-wide, according to a widely repeated statistic that appears to be wildly exaggerated.
The source of this popular myth about Dubai is unclear, and it has been debunked almost as long as it has been repeated. Yet it may have reached false-stat immortality thanks to its dovetailing with the true story that Dubai is construction-mad (one project aims to build the world’s tallest skyscraper; another involves the fabrication of islands with luxury residences and hotels). Dubai certainly uses far more than its share of cranes and is hungry for more.
The Turkish Daily News, Gulf News Report, TreeHugger, Realty Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsmax, Morgan Stanley, the Weekly Standard, the Calgary Herald, Mental Floss and an advertising section in the New York Times all have repeated the Dubai stat. Some attribute it to local sources, some to industry sources. And they variously place Dubai’s share of world cranes at somewhere between 15% and 50%.
In 2000, the Engineering News-Record ran an article titled “Debunking Dubai” that estimated the emirate’s share at more like 1% to 2%. Subsequent reports by Cranes Today, the Associated Press and, again, the Engineering News-Record have come up with estimates that top out around 5% or 10%.
Part of the confusion stems from defining which cranes are being counted. Many of the articles pumping Dubai’s crane fleet narrow the field to tower cranes, which are often used in the construction of small buildings but, despite their name, can vary widely in height and lifting capacity.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
Cranes at the Business Bay construction site in Dubai. (Associated Press Photo by Kamran Jebreili)
Fantastic photo. All I can say is, “rock on!”
Busch Gardens is putting a theme park on one of their fake islands.
And people wonder why their has been such a commodities boom in such products as copper, steel, and cement.
Let me guess, when Dubai boom tapers out by 2015, construction materials will get a lot cheaper.
People think it’s oil money that’s building all those buildings.... It’s true to some extent, but what also is fueling this boom is Dubai is now the worlds capital for laundering money.
People think it’s oil money that’s building all those buildings.... It’s true to some extent, but what also is fueling this boom is Dubai is now the worlds capital for laundering money.
Bttt
Ah ha! Nice play on words, lol
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