Outside our door, high up in the Burj Khalifa, we board one of the tower’s 57 elevators and are catapulted even higher, to the 123rd floor, as if we were weightless objects being effortlessly lifted through the air. Our ears adjust several times as we speed along at almost 60 feet a second.
This is our journey, a ritual that begins our Friday morning routine, early enough to catch the new light rising over the distant desert.
We have our coffee in the wood-paneled residents’ library, elegantly carpeted with designs mimicking the undulations of dunes and the wispy serifs of Arabic calligraphy.… Seguir leyendo »
La que se ha denominado década inmobiliaria terminó el 4 de enero de 2010. Ese día se inauguró en Dubai la Torre Califa, un rascacielos cuyos 828 metros lo han hecho el más alto del planeta. Pero el evento tuvo lugar apenas unas semanas después del pánico en los mercados que puso al emirato al borde de la quiebra -rescatado in extremis por Abu Dabi, su álter ego virtuoso y petrolero del Golfo-, y el gigante vio la luz mientras descendían las sombras sobre el experimento urbano más admirado y denostado de los últimos tiempos: un espejo oscuro y ahora craquelado en el que se reflejan los dilemas de nuestras propias ciudades.… Seguir leyendo »
When the University of Chicago professor, Robert Z Aliber, came to Reykjavik in 2007 and saw the many building cranes rising from the tiny and northernmost capital in the world, he immediately saw that the bubble was going to burst. Like most critics of Iceland's economic boom at the time, his prediction was dismissed by the whole Icelandic establishment. They claimed that Aliber, as a foreigner, didn't have a profound enough understanding of the uniqueness of the Icelandic society.
When the Icelandic Viking economy came crumbling down in the second week of October 2008, many economists started to take another look at Aliber's theory.… Seguir leyendo »
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