Dubai Hotel Inside

A “mile-high tower” in Jeddah has been planned by Kingdom Holdings, while Nakheel is building Al Burj, which, according to project sources, will have a final height of 1.28km, although the developer is keeping the details under wraps.

I would not be surprised to see this project under construction. Only Dubai would build such crazy project. It is worth mentioning that there are many amazing architectural projects under planning and construction in Dubai.

It's the latest word in Gulf excess - a sprawling £800million resort boasting a £13,000-a-night suite and dolphins flown in from the South Pacific, all atop a palm tree-shaped island.

Environmentalists have long criticised both the island and some of the features of the Atlantis hotel, set to open tomorrow.

Analysts wonder, separately, if global financial turmoil could someday crimp Dubai's big tourist dreams.

But Dubai is not blinking: the 113-acre resort on an artificial island off the Persian Gulf coast is among the city-state's biggest bets that tourism can help sustain its economy once regional oil profits stop flowing.

Dubai Hotel Inside
Dubai Hotel InsideThis is so amazing. I wonder how much time and effort has been put into this beautiful piece of art. The picture above is for what is considered the largest city scale model in the world (click here to see more). How come Dubai didn't think of this first?
Dubai Hotel Inside
Dubai Hotel Inside
Dubai Hotel Inside
Dubai Hotel Inside
The model is located in the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, a history museum and a shrine to all things urban, located in People's Square in the heart of downtown. It is a 1:500 scale representation of the city, sprawling over 6,400 square feet -- and even then it all won't fit onto a full floor of the exhibition hall. It is surrounded by walkways, and it can be viewed from a balcony above. With the flick of a switch, artificial night falls, and its thousands of lovingly rendered buildings begin to twinkle. It is surreal, and beautiful, a bit absurd, and it seems to offer, in one comprehensive glance, a sense of the city in its massive, skyscraping, outward-spreading totality. Here, perhaps, one can absorb what it means to build some 10,000 high-rise buildings in a quarter-century. Watch the following short video to get a feel of how big the model is: