Located on the southeast coast of the Persian Gulf with a population of 2,327,000 Dubai is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Dubai – A Desert Land

Around fifty years ago, Dubai was mainly desert. It was one of the hottest and inhospitableplaces on earth.

How has it transformed into a modern city, which is the fastest growing city on the planet?

Inhospitable: An environment that is harsh and difficult to live in.

What Would You Need to Build a City in the Desert?

Dubai was a dry and harsh place, a desert land of sand.

What challenges do you think engineers would have faced?

The Challenges of Building in the Desert

The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, had a vision. He wanted Dubai to become the greatest city on the planet and create a modern city that would rival some of the greatest cities in the western world.

There were many challenges that engineers would have faced, in creating a city in the desert.

Vision: a mental image of what the future will or could be like.Rival: to be in competition with.

Finding Water

Finding a water source was an important starting point for developing Dubai into a city. In Dubai, there are no rivers and hardly any rain, yet it now has water in abundance. Fifty miles to the east, in the Hajar mountains, geologists found evidence of water in the deep wadis (valleys).

Two million years ago, Dubai was a wet place, but over time the water dried out as temperatures rose. The water moved underground, flowing deep under the city. Engineers used this water to help kick start the growth of Dubai.

Abundance: a very large quantity of something.

Sustaining a Water Source

Dubai, and in fact the whole of the UAE, now rely on huge scale desalination plants to sustain the vast amount of water needed to fuel a city.

These plants convert sea water into fresh water. This water is used by over 3 million people and is also used in the maintenance of buildings.

Desalination: refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance.

Water for Cooling Buildings

Water networks are installed into many of the city’s towers. Water is distributed through every level and floor of the buildings. It is pumped up the building in stages, to huge reservoirs, then it simply falls back down.

This water helps to keep the building cool. To cool an average building, a quarter of a million gallons is used every day.Dubai has more than 200 skyscrapers, constantly sucking water from pipes, buried deep in the sand. Being underground, means they are shielded from the heat.

Building on Sand

Another challenge engineers would have faced when building a city in the desert, would have been building on soft, moveable sand.Keeping the skyscrapers standing tall on a soft foundation was a mega challenge for engineers.

Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai is home to most of Dubai’s skyscrapers –each weighing up to a quarter of a million tonnes!

How could they stabilise these buildings on a foundation of sand?

Strong Foundations

Solid foundations need solid rocks to sit on. Engineers drilled deep into the bedrock below Dubai. In some places, bedrock can be found at a shallow level, however Dubai is one of the most difficult places in the world to build skyscrapers.

The bedrock was 130 feet under the ground. This meant drilling through 115 feet of sand to reach the bedrock below. They made long, deep pillars of concrete and steel for strong foundations.

Long steel cages

Pump concrete into the cages to build foundations

bedrocksand

building

Protection from Desert Winds

Engineers vigorously test the materials used for the outside cladding of buildings during the design process. They use a jet engine to blow wind and water at the materials and check for leaks and any damage, to ensure the buildings can withstand strong winds.

The Burj Al Arab, one of the world’s most expensive and iconic buildings, is wrapped in a strong steel frame, bolted to a steel spine. It is much like an exoskeleton, spreading the force of the wind and stabilising the concrete core.

It has shock absorbers inside the skeleton, which relieve some of the wind force and the motion of the building during strong winds.

Shock absorbers

Burj Al Arab

Steel frame

Your Task: You can display your answers in any way you like.

• How has Dubai changed over the last 50 years?

• What are the challenges that engineers faced building a city in the desert?

• How did they overcome some of these challenges?

• Describe Dubai in three adjectives.

• How is Dubai different to our capital city – London?

Steel frame