Dubai

I read yesterday of a boom in expensive housing in Dubai, in particular in a swanky area called the Emirates Hills, that is to say the orange blob in the map below. The Google camera van does not seem to be allowed inside these hills, perhaps that is part of what you are paying for, but it was allowed to cruise the periphery, giving me the image above. A sea of houses, all looking much the same, set in a network of big roads and softened with lots of green - this last presumably the work of expensively desalinated water. Presumably not carbon neutral at all.

I was reminded of the big housing estates you get in parts of the US, with their long walks to the nearest bars or shops. But why on earth would a rich foreigner want to live in a housing estate like the one above? Would the fact that the Dubai authorities are not too inquisitive about exactly where you got your money from be enough?

PS: if its too hot in the Persian Gulf - although maybe not too bad at this time of year, just north of the Tropic of Cancer - you can always go to Greenland. Presumably colder at the moment than it was at the time of Nansen's historic - and, as I recall, fairly near fatal - crossing.

References

Reference 1: New generation of rich spur boom in Dubai’s luxurious homes market: Demand soars since pandemic, with owners inundated with requests to sell homes with swimming pools and terraces - Simeon Kerr, Financial Times - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.rsgs.org/Blog/fridtjof-nansen-the-first-crossing-of-greenland.

Reference 3: The First Crossing of Greenland - Fridtjof Nansen - 1895. Being a school prize for BH's maternal grandfather, in Bedford, that same year.