Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2014, when the Mall of the World project was announced; the plans it describes were current then and may have changed since.
Dubai is building the world’s largest shopping mall. The project will practically be a city of more than 4 million square metres with controlled temperature, housing some 100 hotels, theme parks, theatres and the 370,000-square-metre shopping centre itself, called the “Mall of the World”.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum has not mentioned the total cost of the project or its estimated completion date.
According to Reuters, this giant complex will be able to receive more than 180 million visitors a year. The project aims to give investors confidence in a rapid rise in property prices in Dubai, probably the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates.
Of course, all of Dubai’s new, expensive and ambitious property projects draw criticism from the IMF, which believes they could trigger a new cycle of boom and bust like the one the city went through in 2009.
The following video shows the sheer scale of the mega-complex.
Featured image: Experienceurban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
