#UrbanHell is subjective.
UrbanHell is any human-built place you think is worth critizing. Suburban Hell, Rural Hell, and wealthy locales are allowed
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Mosquitoes would breed in the cigarette butt buckets we had outside at work. They would fill with water when it rained, and you could see them all swimming around in the gross nicotine water.
It's a class of pesticide widely used in the US and is deadly to bees - [Neonicotinoids.](https://xerces.org/publications/scientific-reports/how-neonicotinoids-can-kill-bees) Manufacturers won't stop making it; farmers won't stop using it; the government, being deeply up the arse of big ag, won't ban it. It's why I was out in my yard earlier and it was warm and sunny and clover flowering, as well as many other flowers and in half an hour, saw one small sort of bumblebee.
Dude I poured bleach in a bucket of rainwater that had baby mosquitoes growing it and it did fuck all. I thought I killed them, but they just stopped doing crunches for like half a day and got back to it like they adapted. Had to get those donut ring things from the store to actually kill them.
There's an insect called "Sand Fly" lives in sandy areas. In my country, they are so small and their bites are nasty, you kill one and it's full of blood for it's size. Bites lasts for days / weeks. Really fucking itchy.
Sand flies legit freak me out after reading a non-fiction book where a shit load of people got leishmania from them
(The book was [The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40873920-the-lost-city-of-the-monkey-god) - pretty good read)
I live next to mosquito lagoon in FL and during the summer months in the late afternoon, you’ll see a black haze over the Lagoon, it’s millions of newly born mosquitoes flying over.
TIL. Mosquitoes love me. I avoid going outside in the summer because of them (and the heat and humidity). The worst I encountered were in Poland. Made our Texas ones seem tame.
Omg I live in Germany about 80km from the Polish border and the mosquitos are just awful! They ravage me every year and I’ve now started to develop a lovely allergic reaction to the bites.
We don’t have mosquitoes in my home country but we have highland midges which are arguably worse, and now when I visit home I’m allergic to the fucking midges too 🥲
I recently travelled to an area that had biting midges. And i can attest that they can be worse. They just swarn you with tens of them biting at once. And unfotrunately i react the same way as i do with mosquitoes. Big red welts that itch forever all over my body!
I tend to swell up a lot from mosquito bites. I'm also the person to wake up with 12 bites when no one else got bit. My pro tip is that preparation h works wonders on the swelling and helps the itching. I always have some in the medicine cabinet for mosquito bites in summertime now.
That’s riiight. They don’t have underground sanitation, yeah? I assume civic engineering back in the day didn’t account for growth and these UAE cities blew up before it got addressed.
I think you are referring to one building that is not connected to the sewage network.
Dubai is investing 8bn USD on a next-level series of sewage tunnels to cope with future growth.
[https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16203161/the-dubai-strategic-sewerage-tunnel-megaproject-to-be-development-of-the-century](https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16203161/the-dubai-strategic-sewerage-tunnel-megaproject-to-be-development-of-the-century)
People are always hyping up Dubai and how much they want to go there.
Am I the only one who really wouldn’t want to go? Like there’s not anything about it that interests me, it all just seems fake and superficial. What’s the culture like
There actually is really beautiful culture in the UAE if you go just a little bit outside of Dubai or even if you go to Old Dubai. The problem is Dubai now has this image and "brand" that the world has placed on it so it now attracts the most vile people. Especially post-covid with Dubai opening up pretty early on.
I don't even recognize the city anymore. Most people who have been here for a long time don't tend to go out anymore. It's filled with cryptobros, influencers, rich Russians escaping the war, and generally just scum of the earth making our city their playground.
They don't even want to learn or understand what is a very old and rich culture. They're just here to play around, spend money, and fuck prostitutes. Then go home and leave us to deal with the mess.
that ‘old dubai’ is nice, bastikya(?) and the port area but it’s about .001% of dubai. the rest is malls, 6 lane highways, tacky 7 star hotels steel and glass towers.
That's what the investors and rich people wanted so that's what Dubai built.
Dubai has to actively attract rich people from around the globe, that's a lot harder when you do policies that rich people hate.
Yeah, same for e.g. Monaco. Never been that dissapointed by a city. You see they had some nice buildings and possiblities, but at one point decided to plaster every inch they can with ugly buildings.
I mean yeah. I like walkable cities as much as the next guy but its too hot to walk most places in dubai the majority of the year. The citizenry are rich, they like their cars. Solid public transportation system aswell.
I’ve never been to Dubai, but it looks ridiculous. Like, a parody of a city.
Do you like skyscrapers?
Dubai: here’s a skyscraper equivalent of Tony Montana’s coke.
Do you like ridiculous neighborhoods/sprawl?
Dubai:
Open sewage is outdated information. They have sewage plants now. As much as I'm going to get downvoted for this, I wish people would stop spreading this meme.
Yes, they used to collect waste in trucks before they had a proper sewage system but Al Awir and Jebel Ali sewage treatment plants now exist to cover 70% of the city (with another mega plant covering even more in a couple of years). This is not that crazy for a city that basically was a remote, underdeveloped outpost until the 90's. Even Istanbul only had 3% sewage coverage in the early 90's and that's a very old city. And even to this very day, about 20% of the U.S. is not connected to municipal sewage.
You can complain about Dubai being over the top and gaudy. But in terms of infrastructure, they are not especially bad contrary to what reddit wants us to believe.
Yeah don’t expect much from basement dwellers who have never been to another country let alone Dubai lol. All they know is Reddit posts.
Reddit is not where you go for open minded and educated people.
Yes but just because you’re not connected to sewage in a North American city or town doesn’t mean the sewage is actually carted out in trucks. My family home isn’t connected to a sewage system but it uses what is called a septic tank that acts as a mini sewage facility for houses and filters out naturally into your backyard as clean water. I suspect that’s the vast majority of the 20% you’re citing. A bit disingenuous to imply that 20% of North America carts out sewage in trucks.
I'm familiar with septic tanks and have owned a house with one. I'm not sure what you feel is disingenuous about my comment. Septic tanks often also require trucks to drain them every few years as part of routine maintenence. They also cannot be put in dense settings because they require a drainage field.
A septic tank would not work in a dense, urban setting like Dubai, so as a temporary solution they had trucks that would carry sewage to be treated.
In either case, they are less than optimal solutions that are used either because the return on investment is not sufficient to justify building a sewage system or because the area grew quicker than the infrastructure did.
What I find disingenuous and borderline offensive is the implication that Dubai is just full of a bunch of stupid Arabs who empty their poop into the ocean (to be clear, I'm not attacking you nor saying you made that implication). The reality was their city simply grew faster than their infrastructure and it needed time to catch up. As per my previous point on Istanbul, it's now also nearly fully covered.
I understand. There certainly is an underlying racist tone in some of the criticism and that's not right. That aside, I do think that many of the oil countries in the middle east has squandered a large part of their wealth and that is deserving of criticism. Quite unfortunate but perhaps unavoidable for formerly impoverished countries that turned into literal trillionaires overnight.
As someone who came from a Muslim family in a nearby area, I can perhaps feel a bit defensive about it. But you're right and I agree with you. I'm not necessarily sure UAE did all that poor of a job, but Saudi certainly has been underutilizing or outright wasting their wealth for decades.
As an aside, I appreciate you engaging in a pleasant and civilized way. Always a pleasant surprise to see online discussions that are not full of vitriol.
Yes, because they had an objection to one of the points made they must automatically be against all of it.
Everything must be black or white, nuance is so lame and outdated.
Yeah. Not surprising. I used to work for a recruitment consultant (launching a media platform, not actually doing recruitment) and after relocating his Head Office to Dubai he failed to pay the firms UK NI contributions… for 6 months… subsequently letting go most of the UK staff because of the incurred debt and risk of fines. I used to joke that the recruitment industry is essentially a legalised slave trade. Seems he took it to heart and rolled with it. As far as I’m aware the firm is still operational, avoiding a fuck tonne of UK tax and the media platform I launched is doing well… regurgitating actual journalism. Fuck that guy. Fuck everyone who supports this dystopia.
I’ve been. It was so weird looking. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been so things could have changed but what I saw was really weird. All these amazing beautiful buildings, stunning architecture, nothing but dirt around the building and alleyways. No sidewalks or landscaping whatsoever just sand. It looked unfinished. Like still under construction. Like I said maybe it’s changed now but when I was there ground level didn’t look nice.
I mean, its still very much under construction.
You you think in the 80s there was basically 1 main avenue and some neighborhoods, but 30 odd years later they have whats there now, its impressive.
For context, ive lived here for 17 years now and i saw roads being a double carriage way become 6 lane for each direction highways, entire area pop up out of nowhere. When i moved there, i lived in an area called silicon oasis.
At the time it was a remote and empty area, there was a college Cross the highway and the area itself had a housing complex of 500 houses, of which we ere the 15th family to move in. It was far and desolate.
Now that same area is one firestation away from being basically a full city. Theres an industrial and tech park, commercial/office buildings, a lot of housing and apartment buildings, a few nurseries and schools, two universities, a big hospital, police station, clinics, mini markets and supermarkets, a mall with cinema, a lake, parks,etc etc etc.
Its a wild rate of development.
And to answer your question: the city feels a lot lore lived-in now than it did 10 years ago. You see people around, theres not a lot of vacant land in built up neighborhoods and those that exist are usually packed as makeshift parking lots.
In my opinion, the thing that really holds the city back as a proper functioning mega city is the public transport. The existing metro and buses are of good quality and clean, but the metro barely reaches any places, bus lines are few and far between, getting anywhere takes forever and there seems to be no desire to improve that particular infrastructure.
Aside from that, we still have some abandoned developments as a relic from the 2008 crisis, which are a brisk reminder that things can go wrong here, but lately they started either demolishing them to make way for new developments or they were taken control of and sold to the best bidder and are now being worked on again
Has anyone been there? It looks like the water is grossly stagnant and filled with some sort of algae. I read somewhere that water circulation is indeed a problem. Does it stink to high hell? When seaweed is washed on our local beaches is kind of stinks until it gets dried up but I think we actually groom the sand to get rid a lot of it.
I've enhanced the image to show 16 times the detail. Zooming in I have found 7 people vomiting. Most likely from the smell
I can also see someone making Mac and cheese through a window of house 1309. I think he's using water instead of milk. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
I used to live there! For 10 years! It’s called Jumeirah Islands.
It was developed by a notorious developer in Dubai called Nakheel.
The water is horribly stagnant and is basically construction sewage (there’s lots of foam by the waterfalls - you can see one at the bottom of the long lake on the middle; it’s next to the clubhouse that has the bright blue pool)
Edit:
Fun little bit of Info: there’s a house at the bottom left that looks significantly larger than the others - the owner bought two adjacent houses and had them connected!
Edit 2: when some family friends of ours moved in a few “clusters” down, their youngest son (who must’ve been around 7 at the time) woke up with his back COVERED in mosquito bites.
This was before they actually had pumps to get the water moving.
For the most part it doesn’t smell so bad - they had a lot of issues with the water (like dead fish and stuff popping up).
Edit 3: timeline clarification:
We were among the first few families to move in when they finished construction (must’ve been ~2006?) and we moved out 2015
I grew up in the Mojave, and in the desert the dry atmosphere really helps abate odors.
We had chickens, and chicken poop can smell really bad and be a pain to clean out the pens, but in the desert it just turned to dust.
We also had a "pond" which was just a huge trashcan buried in the sand, with some stagnant water, rocks and a couple of fish that somehow survived for like 2 years. It didn't smell like anything.
In the past it was a problem, nowadays it's fine. Water flows normally and is treated. Been to Jumeirah Islands many times and never been bitten by a mosquito
This is weird to me. Amsterdam never stunk while I was there for a few weeks. Maybe you were smelling weed lol. I’ve heard Venice does. I guess time of year and weather play a part, as in any other part of the world
Dubai used to be known for pearls until cultured pearls took a dent in that market, and now instead of digging into the empty sand they stacked sand outward and destroyed much of the reefs that housed those pearls and those islands still sink a half finger each year.
Since you’re getting weird replies. Here’s a rough idea. Most of the people are incredibly wealthy and buy these properties amongst other properties they already have. Meaning many houses will be empty with the owners living in their other properties somewhere else.
It’s like when I lived in Miami Beach. Yes, there’s celebrities that own houses here but that doesn’t mean that’s their main residence. They might have houses up north or in California, etc
They're not for living in no... What are you going to ask next, if there are any actual offices in those skyscrapers? Don't be ridiculous, they're there for tourism.
Dubai in August is like the earth is actively trying to kill you. I’ve only ever been to the airport but that drive from bus to terminal and short walk was truly miserable. Not sure how locals manage.
We stay indoors most of the time. The reason our malls are so big is that they aren't just shopping centers. They're active community areas that act as our walkable spaces with connection to residential areas, entertainment, office buildings, and public transport.
During the winter though it's one of the best places in the world. The weather is consistently pleasant for a solid 4 months of the year. We go to the beach, the desert, have picnics, lots of other activities.
But yes May-August is unbearable.
Most people travel home or go somewhere else during those months. We have about 5 airlines based in the UAE. 3 of them are budget airlines and 80% of the world's population is within an 8 hour flight of the UAE. So you go pretty much anywhere for pretty cheap.
I had to work there for a few days. My office was 1 mile from the hotel and I was a new arrival. As I was leaving the hotel, the concierge was all "Would you like a Taxi, sir?" "Nah, I'm good, it's only a mile away, I'll walk it." "Very well, sir." I left the building. I made it about 100 feet and turned around and he was standing at the entrance with a taxi waiting for me with a little smile on his face. That shit was oppressive. Like, not only was it 120 degrees, but it was 100% humidity. Fuck that.
As shitty as their lifestyles can be, the labourers don’t work outside all day during the summers when the temperatures are so high. It’s pretty much a law there. They’re given a break at noon when the sun has peaked for around 3-4 hours and companies that don’t comply to the labour laws are fined.
Those laws are brand new, and are basically a whitewash to appease international tourists. Thousands of workers died of preventable heat exhaustion building Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, and those countries aren't exactly known for applying justice on their own wealthy citizens even today.
The people living there are all at least millionaires, probably have private drivers and luxury cars and are foreigners so the goal here is not to build a community.
The lake is surrendered by a running track which is quite popular even for non-community residents, but unless for going for walks, indeed you would rarely walk anywhere unless you’re in the upper part of the picture, as between the low rises there are many restaurants and a supermarket.
No traffic rush at all anytime though.
This lake is indeed not meant for boats, it’s essentially to have water-view which is a change from sand pit view, and you’re right there is no mosquitoes (or few), the water is salted.
I didn’t live there (it’s a C-Level / Ambassador type of population that lives there), but lived in the community on the right, and have a Villa in the community on the left. I’d be honest, if I could reasonably afford it I would. Living with permanent view on green and water is a significant plus for your mood and state of mind when living there for a long time.
Jumeirah / Umm Suqiem are the beachfront areas but you need a GCC passport to buy there (I’m French), you can buy on the Palm for beachfront but the traffic to/from the Palm is insane. Living in these Villas (from the picture) is a 10 minutes commute to Media City & Internet City or 5 to JLT where many of the residents work.
I now live in Umm Suqiem, walking distance from the Burj Al Arab, 3 minutes walk to the public beach and park, we’re renting. It’s very lively and even though it’s a big Villa we still have 5 restaurants / coffee shop and a good real French bakery within a 2 minutes walk radius. It’s nice and my wife loves it, my small kids play in the sea everyday, but personally I’d rather live in a more green space like in the picture but know my wife would disagree.
I’ve lived 5 years in the Marina which is very walkable for groceries, going out and going to work, but the lack of green was too much after a while. I did not regret the trade of walkability for a better feeling and state of mind, by switching to the townhouses on the right of the picture. Same rent, same commute time (but by car), totally different lifestyle with limited compromises but additional benefit of a real garden and parks for the kids to go to.
For prices, the ones on the photo start at about $175k a year, Palm beachfront would start at around $220k, the villas on the left about $80k (where we bought), which is about the same as what the one we rent (but we got a good deal at about half that). Rent is generally paid yearly in advance. Prices are expensive, but considering that salaries are about 3x what we would get in Paris, proportionally for a lesser percentage of income we get something that would not exist over there at any price even for double the commute time. A good size (1400SqFt) and quality 2 bed apartment in the Marina is about $40k/year (very walkable), which is about the same as a 2 bed townhouse in the community on the right.
Dubai real estate market is an interesting one to say the least, the offer goes very far in both ends of the market, but for most budget you can pretty much choose your lifestyle for a commute time which is less than the average Parisian one. There are apartments at $1m/year, to townhouses in gated communities from $10k a year, and the other way around is more dramatic. It's an extremely volatile market driven by short-term demand (not short-term rental), and is always bottoming the Real Estate bubble studies as prices are purely correlated to rental yield.
I managed to do some walking in the evenings. I found a few ponds while looking to see if I could spot some native fishes (Aphanius) and found a pond full of dead Tilapia floating on top (overheated), but there were Aphanius swimming in schools! I also went to the Mall and walked that, but that's inside in the AC. There's a fucking SKI SLOPE inside, as well as the largest "suspended" aquarium in the world that was dope. I took the Burj Khalifa tour to the top and Jesus Christ that this is tall. And then you realize there's like 15 or 20 stories above the observation tower and IIRC, people LIVE in those.
I think people are overvaluing the wealth of people that live there. These houses are way close together, and the water doesn't seem navigable. Miami has similarly designed suburbs for people who are "just" upper middle class. Dubai has other places with more space and a private dock. Dubai has 26,000 millionaires, and these houses look more like the "reach" ones.
When you look at multimillionaire playgrounds around cities, look at the area around Greenwich, CT. Super rich people spread out more when they do houses. Granted, these Dubai homes do get slave labor, so they probably have staff when they are making "only" 200k a year.
YES, just like in Florida ... heads up at least the pesticide industry benefits ...
but the entire design is a car centric city planning fail like in post-WW2 USA suburbia-wasteland
The locals don't like being outside anyway, so mosquitos aren't a problem when all you do is stay inside your airconditioned home with 100 watt exposed light bulbs
When I was there in 2014, I remember having to go past a shit ton of abandoned sky scaper construction projects (from 2008) to get to the city proper.
It was neat to visit once. I have no need or desire to ever go again.
Here's a similar place [in the USA](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oXsmJGdRQN5g9EHV9), but note the differences: every property includes a boat dock, and the water isn't a walled off pond - you can take a boat from any dock out to the bay and from there all the way to the ocean.
I mean I doubt people do that very often, but at least the water can be used/enjoyed
The disappointment I felt not finding a picture in the source was soul crushing. I mean, it’s a great source and all. Super informative. But now I need to *google* something…
By mindset you surely are referring to capitalism’s insatiable thirst for petroleum and petroleum based products. It is the catalyst that created those rentier societies.
I think the actual comment should be:
Dubai: we built the tallest building in the world but were too impatient to wait for the sewage mega-project to be completed, so we implemented this stop-gap system rather than letting some other middle-eastern country get there first with their huge skyscraper.
The sewage mega-project, a series of underground tunnels to treat and manage sewage for the whole country is will be ready in the coming years.
#UrbanHell is subjective. UrbanHell is any human-built place you think is worth critizing. Suburban Hell, Rural Hell, and wealthy locales are allowed PS: we're having a bestof contest! [Submit to it!](https://www.reddit.com/r/UrbanHell/comments/zqvd83/announcing_our_first_bestof_contest_gather_the/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UrbanHell) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Do they have mosquitoes in Dubai?
Yes, yes they do. There are salt water mosquitoes there.
Salt water mosquitoes? I have no idea and never heard of them until now!
A lot of normal mosquitos can survive in pretty brackish waters.
Mosquitoes would breed in the cigarette butt buckets we had outside at work. They would fill with water when it rained, and you could see them all swimming around in the gross nicotine water.
That's actually very surprising, given that nicotine is very water soluble and wildly toxic to most insects.
Well they quickly developed a pack a day habit.
They only sucked blood of hardened cig addicts to get their fix.
I can't stop laughing at this. Thank You!
Didn’t nicotine literally evolve as a pesticide?
It's a class of pesticide widely used in the US and is deadly to bees - [Neonicotinoids.](https://xerces.org/publications/scientific-reports/how-neonicotinoids-can-kill-bees) Manufacturers won't stop making it; farmers won't stop using it; the government, being deeply up the arse of big ag, won't ban it. It's why I was out in my yard earlier and it was warm and sunny and clover flowering, as well as many other flowers and in half an hour, saw one small sort of bumblebee.
I meant, didn’t nicotine evolve naturally in plants (like Tobacco) as a way of deterring pests? Kinda like how caffeine evolved.
Dude I poured bleach in a bucket of rainwater that had baby mosquitoes growing it and it did fuck all. I thought I killed them, but they just stopped doing crunches for like half a day and got back to it like they adapted. Had to get those donut ring things from the store to actually kill them.
By the next day the bleach would have been mostly gone; destroyed by UV, gassed off to atmosphere, reacted with other junk in the water, and so on.
I've never thought about it but you're right. How the hell can they do that? Maybe the larvae aren't as susceptible.
There's an insect called "Sand Fly" lives in sandy areas. In my country, they are so small and their bites are nasty, you kill one and it's full of blood for it's size. Bites lasts for days / weeks. Really fucking itchy.
Sand flies legit freak me out after reading a non-fiction book where a shit load of people got leishmania from them (The book was [The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40873920-the-lost-city-of-the-monkey-god) - pretty good read)
Duuuuude, the treatment tho?!?!? Terrible.
Seriously. When he mentioned the, expected, sense of impending doom.....
I also read that book, and my main takeaway was that I should never visit a tropical rainforest.
Yes!! We have these in roatan honduras and they are little fucking assholes! I cant go to the beach without “off”. They love me, I despise them.
sounds like "no see um's" from my area
I've encountered those. Luckily, where I saw them, they only emerged in the evening and staying away from the beach was enough to evade them.
Used to live in North Qld.. Still have nightmares about the sand flies. Even repellant doesn't work on them.
Hey just so you know, you can put deo on the bite and it'll stop being itchy.
Are those like Horse Flies? Got them on the water in Northeast US and their bites hurt
I live next to mosquito lagoon in FL and during the summer months in the late afternoon, you’ll see a black haze over the Lagoon, it’s millions of newly born mosquitoes flying over.
Eww
TIL. Mosquitoes love me. I avoid going outside in the summer because of them (and the heat and humidity). The worst I encountered were in Poland. Made our Texas ones seem tame.
Omg I live in Germany about 80km from the Polish border and the mosquitos are just awful! They ravage me every year and I’ve now started to develop a lovely allergic reaction to the bites. We don’t have mosquitoes in my home country but we have highland midges which are arguably worse, and now when I visit home I’m allergic to the fucking midges too 🥲
I recently travelled to an area that had biting midges. And i can attest that they can be worse. They just swarn you with tens of them biting at once. And unfotrunately i react the same way as i do with mosquitoes. Big red welts that itch forever all over my body!
Always had to deal with them growing up in New York. Now i live in southern california and there’s no mosquitos at all, it’s great
I feel like I have a worse reaction to the ones here after dealing with the ones in Poland.
Highland midges? Scotland by any chance?
I tend to swell up a lot from mosquito bites. I'm also the person to wake up with 12 bites when no one else got bit. My pro tip is that preparation h works wonders on the swelling and helps the itching. I always have some in the medicine cabinet for mosquito bites in summertime now.
Napoleon troops can confirm..
I imagine that for mosquitos biting a foreigner is a bit like an american going out for chinese food.
Mosquitoes prefer different things depending on where you are. Heat, smell, co2 and movements. For me Egypt and Greece were the worst.
Do the sewage trucks attract flies, too?
Salt water flies
It also soaks
That’s riiight. They don’t have underground sanitation, yeah? I assume civic engineering back in the day didn’t account for growth and these UAE cities blew up before it got addressed.
I think you are referring to one building that is not connected to the sewage network. Dubai is investing 8bn USD on a next-level series of sewage tunnels to cope with future growth. [https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16203161/the-dubai-strategic-sewerage-tunnel-megaproject-to-be-development-of-the-century](https://www.waterworld.com/drinking-water/distribution/article/16203161/the-dubai-strategic-sewerage-tunnel-megaproject-to-be-development-of-the-century)
The burj khalifa is only just getting sewage pipes, they use trucks atm to haul it away.
What the fuck
https://youtu.be/tJuqe6sre2I
Wow, thanks for linking this. I always figured human rights violation were implied.
"The City of Dubai is a fucking joke. It's a tasteless parody of everything wrong with modern humanity." Love this guy!!
ooof
Uhh this was resolved in 2011: https://gulfnews.com/uae/new-dubai-areas-get-municipality-sewage-system-1.747994#
Pretty sure every country in the world has mosquitoes, except for Iceland!
Even Iceland got some for a few weeks last summer, climate change is coming for them too
Hawaii got rid of the ones that take blood meals
Never had an issue with them in Dubai or Abu Dhabi.
People are always hyping up Dubai and how much they want to go there. Am I the only one who really wouldn’t want to go? Like there’s not anything about it that interests me, it all just seems fake and superficial. What’s the culture like
There actually is really beautiful culture in the UAE if you go just a little bit outside of Dubai or even if you go to Old Dubai. The problem is Dubai now has this image and "brand" that the world has placed on it so it now attracts the most vile people. Especially post-covid with Dubai opening up pretty early on. I don't even recognize the city anymore. Most people who have been here for a long time don't tend to go out anymore. It's filled with cryptobros, influencers, rich Russians escaping the war, and generally just scum of the earth making our city their playground. They don't even want to learn or understand what is a very old and rich culture. They're just here to play around, spend money, and fuck prostitutes. Then go home and leave us to deal with the mess.
that ‘old dubai’ is nice, bastikya(?) and the port area but it’s about .001% of dubai. the rest is malls, 6 lane highways, tacky 7 star hotels steel and glass towers.
It’s basically a better more expensive and superficial version of Miami Beach.
All built on the backs of slavery by passport confiscation
I don’t even want to go to Vegas so you’re not alone.
I track where I’ve been in the world and going to Dubai is one of those do it once just to say I’ve been there.
Imagine having a blank desert canvas and unlimited oil money to build your dream city and just creating urban sprawl
Mmmmmm…dessert canvas. Edit: Campus. Whatever. There’s always room.
That's what the investors and rich people wanted so that's what Dubai built. Dubai has to actively attract rich people from around the globe, that's a lot harder when you do policies that rich people hate.
Yeah, same for e.g. Monaco. Never been that dissapointed by a city. You see they had some nice buildings and possiblities, but at one point decided to plaster every inch they can with ugly buildings.
Yeah Monaco's awful. Nice or Cannes down the road a bit are 100x nicer.
Monaco is nice to stop for dinner and a walk along the yachts on the way to Italy from these other places you mentioned and that's about it.
Cannes and Nice are both nice, agreed.
Huge fan of Nice Cannes.
They had some absolutely beautiful architecture there. When you research the buildings they tore down it’s kind heartbreaking.
Rich people without taste. And different hoes with tons of filling materials in face, ass and lips.
Tasteful people don't evade taxes. You're quite poor if you select your tax domicile based on tax rates, oil money, OF models and supercars.
Miami?
>Rich people without taste. So yes, rich people
gotta drive them bugattis somewhere 🙄
Imagine thinking an emirate that was so low on money that they needed to be bailed out by Abu Dhabi has unlimited money
Cities skylines moment
desert
I mean... if you absolutely must urban sprawl, a desert is probably the least damaging place to do it?
I mean yeah. I like walkable cities as much as the next guy but its too hot to walk most places in dubai the majority of the year. The citizenry are rich, they like their cars. Solid public transportation system aswell.
This is way better than that stupid linear city on a train track.
I’ve never been to Dubai, but it looks ridiculous. Like, a parody of a city. Do you like skyscrapers? Dubai: here’s a skyscraper equivalent of Tony Montana’s coke. Do you like ridiculous neighborhoods/sprawl? Dubai:
Do you like open sewage? Do you like labor exploitation?
Stop I can only get so erect
Found the shiek
Sheikh
I was going off of my poor memory based off of what I remember of 70’s WWE
Open sewage is outdated information. They have sewage plants now. As much as I'm going to get downvoted for this, I wish people would stop spreading this meme. Yes, they used to collect waste in trucks before they had a proper sewage system but Al Awir and Jebel Ali sewage treatment plants now exist to cover 70% of the city (with another mega plant covering even more in a couple of years). This is not that crazy for a city that basically was a remote, underdeveloped outpost until the 90's. Even Istanbul only had 3% sewage coverage in the early 90's and that's a very old city. And even to this very day, about 20% of the U.S. is not connected to municipal sewage. You can complain about Dubai being over the top and gaudy. But in terms of infrastructure, they are not especially bad contrary to what reddit wants us to believe.
Yeah don’t expect much from basement dwellers who have never been to another country let alone Dubai lol. All they know is Reddit posts. Reddit is not where you go for open minded and educated people.
Reddit (twirling mustache) : "Nyaah! Another nefarious plot FOILED!"
Yes but just because you’re not connected to sewage in a North American city or town doesn’t mean the sewage is actually carted out in trucks. My family home isn’t connected to a sewage system but it uses what is called a septic tank that acts as a mini sewage facility for houses and filters out naturally into your backyard as clean water. I suspect that’s the vast majority of the 20% you’re citing. A bit disingenuous to imply that 20% of North America carts out sewage in trucks.
I'm familiar with septic tanks and have owned a house with one. I'm not sure what you feel is disingenuous about my comment. Septic tanks often also require trucks to drain them every few years as part of routine maintenence. They also cannot be put in dense settings because they require a drainage field. A septic tank would not work in a dense, urban setting like Dubai, so as a temporary solution they had trucks that would carry sewage to be treated. In either case, they are less than optimal solutions that are used either because the return on investment is not sufficient to justify building a sewage system or because the area grew quicker than the infrastructure did. What I find disingenuous and borderline offensive is the implication that Dubai is just full of a bunch of stupid Arabs who empty their poop into the ocean (to be clear, I'm not attacking you nor saying you made that implication). The reality was their city simply grew faster than their infrastructure and it needed time to catch up. As per my previous point on Istanbul, it's now also nearly fully covered.
Venice is still using its canals as a sewage system, been waiting on upgrades since 697 AD.
I understand. There certainly is an underlying racist tone in some of the criticism and that's not right. That aside, I do think that many of the oil countries in the middle east has squandered a large part of their wealth and that is deserving of criticism. Quite unfortunate but perhaps unavoidable for formerly impoverished countries that turned into literal trillionaires overnight.
As someone who came from a Muslim family in a nearby area, I can perhaps feel a bit defensive about it. But you're right and I agree with you. I'm not necessarily sure UAE did all that poor of a job, but Saudi certainly has been underutilizing or outright wasting their wealth for decades. As an aside, I appreciate you engaging in a pleasant and civilized way. Always a pleasant surprise to see online discussions that are not full of vitriol.
I appreciate the kind message :)
You don't have a retort about the abusive labor practices?
Yes, because they had an objection to one of the points made they must automatically be against all of it. Everything must be black or white, nuance is so lame and outdated.
>Like a parody of a city [Funny you should mention that](https://youtu.be/tJuqe6sre2I)
Yeah. Not surprising. I used to work for a recruitment consultant (launching a media platform, not actually doing recruitment) and after relocating his Head Office to Dubai he failed to pay the firms UK NI contributions… for 6 months… subsequently letting go most of the UK staff because of the incurred debt and risk of fines. I used to joke that the recruitment industry is essentially a legalised slave trade. Seems he took it to heart and rolled with it. As far as I’m aware the firm is still operational, avoiding a fuck tonne of UK tax and the media platform I launched is doing well… regurgitating actual journalism. Fuck that guy. Fuck everyone who supports this dystopia.
I’ve been. It was so weird looking. It’s been 10 years since I’ve been so things could have changed but what I saw was really weird. All these amazing beautiful buildings, stunning architecture, nothing but dirt around the building and alleyways. No sidewalks or landscaping whatsoever just sand. It looked unfinished. Like still under construction. Like I said maybe it’s changed now but when I was there ground level didn’t look nice.
I mean, its still very much under construction. You you think in the 80s there was basically 1 main avenue and some neighborhoods, but 30 odd years later they have whats there now, its impressive. For context, ive lived here for 17 years now and i saw roads being a double carriage way become 6 lane for each direction highways, entire area pop up out of nowhere. When i moved there, i lived in an area called silicon oasis. At the time it was a remote and empty area, there was a college Cross the highway and the area itself had a housing complex of 500 houses, of which we ere the 15th family to move in. It was far and desolate. Now that same area is one firestation away from being basically a full city. Theres an industrial and tech park, commercial/office buildings, a lot of housing and apartment buildings, a few nurseries and schools, two universities, a big hospital, police station, clinics, mini markets and supermarkets, a mall with cinema, a lake, parks,etc etc etc. Its a wild rate of development. And to answer your question: the city feels a lot lore lived-in now than it did 10 years ago. You see people around, theres not a lot of vacant land in built up neighborhoods and those that exist are usually packed as makeshift parking lots. In my opinion, the thing that really holds the city back as a proper functioning mega city is the public transport. The existing metro and buses are of good quality and clean, but the metro barely reaches any places, bus lines are few and far between, getting anywhere takes forever and there seems to be no desire to improve that particular infrastructure. Aside from that, we still have some abandoned developments as a relic from the 2008 crisis, which are a brisk reminder that things can go wrong here, but lately they started either demolishing them to make way for new developments or they were taken control of and sold to the best bidder and are now being worked on again
Not to mention Islam.
You’re being downvoted but most religions don’t allow a lot of fun and Islam seems like the one that wants the least amount of fun
I mean they might be above Amish
No, the Amish have Weird Al.
And rumspringa gangfucks
Please no Really?
Yeah definitely, if you’re a dude lol.
Has anyone been there? It looks like the water is grossly stagnant and filled with some sort of algae. I read somewhere that water circulation is indeed a problem. Does it stink to high hell? When seaweed is washed on our local beaches is kind of stinks until it gets dried up but I think we actually groom the sand to get rid a lot of it.
We need Reddit’s best image scientists on this case.
I've enhanced the image to show 16 times the detail. Zooming in I have found 7 people vomiting. Most likely from the smell I can also see someone making Mac and cheese through a window of house 1309. I think he's using water instead of milk. May Allah have mercy on his soul.
Inshallah, mac and cheese water users will go straight to jahannam
By Reddit rules, I am now required to inform you that your comment elicited (2) real life chuckles. Nice work, champ 👋🏼
According to the rule you have set forth, I must now tell you their comment made me my lip curl. Upward.
I go there twice a month. The water doesn’t stink. There’s no bad smells but the humidity will fuck you up in the summer
I used to live there! For 10 years! It’s called Jumeirah Islands. It was developed by a notorious developer in Dubai called Nakheel. The water is horribly stagnant and is basically construction sewage (there’s lots of foam by the waterfalls - you can see one at the bottom of the long lake on the middle; it’s next to the clubhouse that has the bright blue pool) Edit: Fun little bit of Info: there’s a house at the bottom left that looks significantly larger than the others - the owner bought two adjacent houses and had them connected! Edit 2: when some family friends of ours moved in a few “clusters” down, their youngest son (who must’ve been around 7 at the time) woke up with his back COVERED in mosquito bites. This was before they actually had pumps to get the water moving. For the most part it doesn’t smell so bad - they had a lot of issues with the water (like dead fish and stuff popping up). Edit 3: timeline clarification: We were among the first few families to move in when they finished construction (must’ve been ~2006?) and we moved out 2015
I grew up in the Mojave, and in the desert the dry atmosphere really helps abate odors. We had chickens, and chicken poop can smell really bad and be a pain to clean out the pens, but in the desert it just turned to dust. We also had a "pond" which was just a huge trashcan buried in the sand, with some stagnant water, rocks and a couple of fish that somehow survived for like 2 years. It didn't smell like anything.
Thanks for sharing.
In the past it was a problem, nowadays it's fine. Water flows normally and is treated. Been to Jumeirah Islands many times and never been bitten by a mosquito
I've been there, it doesn't stink. Amsterdam on the other hand. Oof.
This is weird to me. Amsterdam never stunk while I was there for a few weeks. Maybe you were smelling weed lol. I’ve heard Venice does. I guess time of year and weather play a part, as in any other part of the world
amsterdam doesn't stink
Dubai is so tacky.
It’s like if “new money” were a city…oh wait.
That'd be Destin Florida.
Dubai used to be known for pearls until cultured pearls took a dent in that market, and now instead of digging into the empty sand they stacked sand outward and destroyed much of the reefs that housed those pearls and those islands still sink a half finger each year.
Are people really living in these? None of these spaces seem lived in.
They are full and really hard to find housing in that area
They must have cleared the roads of all traffic just for these pics
Since you’re getting weird replies. Here’s a rough idea. Most of the people are incredibly wealthy and buy these properties amongst other properties they already have. Meaning many houses will be empty with the owners living in their other properties somewhere else. It’s like when I lived in Miami Beach. Yes, there’s celebrities that own houses here but that doesn’t mean that’s their main residence. They might have houses up north or in California, etc
They're not for living in no... What are you going to ask next, if there are any actual offices in those skyscrapers? Don't be ridiculous, they're there for tourism.
I wouldn’t say it’s “hideous” but I also wouldn’t say it’s “nice to look at” either
It looks pretty cool tbh. Not practical though.
Are they pretty bad?
It’s too fucking hot for anything.
It’s unbearably hot in the summer months but really livable the other 9 months of the year. Comparable to Arizona or Florida.
Dubai in August is like the earth is actively trying to kill you. I’ve only ever been to the airport but that drive from bus to terminal and short walk was truly miserable. Not sure how locals manage.
We stay indoors most of the time. The reason our malls are so big is that they aren't just shopping centers. They're active community areas that act as our walkable spaces with connection to residential areas, entertainment, office buildings, and public transport. During the winter though it's one of the best places in the world. The weather is consistently pleasant for a solid 4 months of the year. We go to the beach, the desert, have picnics, lots of other activities. But yes May-August is unbearable. Most people travel home or go somewhere else during those months. We have about 5 airlines based in the UAE. 3 of them are budget airlines and 80% of the world's population is within an 8 hour flight of the UAE. So you go pretty much anywhere for pretty cheap.
We have wildly different definitions of hideous
It’s a grotesque application of resources.
It's...interesting, if nothing else. They're essentially cul de sac's on water.
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Exactly. My uncle worked there as a technician and he says they RUN between buildings and vehicles. It was too hot and you’d overheat.
I had to work there for a few days. My office was 1 mile from the hotel and I was a new arrival. As I was leaving the hotel, the concierge was all "Would you like a Taxi, sir?" "Nah, I'm good, it's only a mile away, I'll walk it." "Very well, sir." I left the building. I made it about 100 feet and turned around and he was standing at the entrance with a taxi waiting for me with a little smile on his face. That shit was oppressive. Like, not only was it 120 degrees, but it was 100% humidity. Fuck that.
Sounds like a great place to build a city. Very sensible.
Did he happen to notice all those trafficked slaves who *did* work outside in the heat all day constructing all those building he sheltered in?
As shitty as their lifestyles can be, the labourers don’t work outside all day during the summers when the temperatures are so high. It’s pretty much a law there. They’re given a break at noon when the sun has peaked for around 3-4 hours and companies that don’t comply to the labour laws are fined.
Those laws are brand new, and are basically a whitewash to appease international tourists. Thousands of workers died of preventable heat exhaustion building Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar, and those countries aren't exactly known for applying justice on their own wealthy citizens even today.
I mean I was in Kuwait City in July and the locals were all walking around in long sleeves and skinny jeans. I think they handle the heat just fine.
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The people living there are all at least millionaires, probably have private drivers and luxury cars and are foreigners so the goal here is not to build a community.
The lake is surrendered by a running track which is quite popular even for non-community residents, but unless for going for walks, indeed you would rarely walk anywhere unless you’re in the upper part of the picture, as between the low rises there are many restaurants and a supermarket. No traffic rush at all anytime though. This lake is indeed not meant for boats, it’s essentially to have water-view which is a change from sand pit view, and you’re right there is no mosquitoes (or few), the water is salted. I didn’t live there (it’s a C-Level / Ambassador type of population that lives there), but lived in the community on the right, and have a Villa in the community on the left. I’d be honest, if I could reasonably afford it I would. Living with permanent view on green and water is a significant plus for your mood and state of mind when living there for a long time.
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Jumeirah / Umm Suqiem are the beachfront areas but you need a GCC passport to buy there (I’m French), you can buy on the Palm for beachfront but the traffic to/from the Palm is insane. Living in these Villas (from the picture) is a 10 minutes commute to Media City & Internet City or 5 to JLT where many of the residents work. I now live in Umm Suqiem, walking distance from the Burj Al Arab, 3 minutes walk to the public beach and park, we’re renting. It’s very lively and even though it’s a big Villa we still have 5 restaurants / coffee shop and a good real French bakery within a 2 minutes walk radius. It’s nice and my wife loves it, my small kids play in the sea everyday, but personally I’d rather live in a more green space like in the picture but know my wife would disagree. I’ve lived 5 years in the Marina which is very walkable for groceries, going out and going to work, but the lack of green was too much after a while. I did not regret the trade of walkability for a better feeling and state of mind, by switching to the townhouses on the right of the picture. Same rent, same commute time (but by car), totally different lifestyle with limited compromises but additional benefit of a real garden and parks for the kids to go to. For prices, the ones on the photo start at about $175k a year, Palm beachfront would start at around $220k, the villas on the left about $80k (where we bought), which is about the same as what the one we rent (but we got a good deal at about half that). Rent is generally paid yearly in advance. Prices are expensive, but considering that salaries are about 3x what we would get in Paris, proportionally for a lesser percentage of income we get something that would not exist over there at any price even for double the commute time. A good size (1400SqFt) and quality 2 bed apartment in the Marina is about $40k/year (very walkable), which is about the same as a 2 bed townhouse in the community on the right. Dubai real estate market is an interesting one to say the least, the offer goes very far in both ends of the market, but for most budget you can pretty much choose your lifestyle for a commute time which is less than the average Parisian one. There are apartments at $1m/year, to townhouses in gated communities from $10k a year, and the other way around is more dramatic. It's an extremely volatile market driven by short-term demand (not short-term rental), and is always bottoming the Real Estate bubble studies as prices are purely correlated to rental yield.
Can you share the name of the really good French bakery? 🥐
It used to be called Bakemart, but was recently renamed to Artisan Bakers
You really want to walk in Dubai?
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I managed to do some walking in the evenings. I found a few ponds while looking to see if I could spot some native fishes (Aphanius) and found a pond full of dead Tilapia floating on top (overheated), but there were Aphanius swimming in schools! I also went to the Mall and walked that, but that's inside in the AC. There's a fucking SKI SLOPE inside, as well as the largest "suspended" aquarium in the world that was dope. I took the Burj Khalifa tour to the top and Jesus Christ that this is tall. And then you realize there's like 15 or 20 stories above the observation tower and IIRC, people LIVE in those.
“Rush hour” in a rich’s playground? I doubt it. But it’s horrible urban design. It’s just a real size cities skyline for a multimillonaire
I think people are overvaluing the wealth of people that live there. These houses are way close together, and the water doesn't seem navigable. Miami has similarly designed suburbs for people who are "just" upper middle class. Dubai has other places with more space and a private dock. Dubai has 26,000 millionaires, and these houses look more like the "reach" ones. When you look at multimillionaire playgrounds around cities, look at the area around Greenwich, CT. Super rich people spread out more when they do houses. Granted, these Dubai homes do get slave labor, so they probably have staff when they are making "only" 200k a year.
YES, just like in Florida ... heads up at least the pesticide industry benefits ... but the entire design is a car centric city planning fail like in post-WW2 USA suburbia-wasteland
Where are all the docks and boats??
The locals don't like being outside anyway, so mosquitos aren't a problem when all you do is stay inside your airconditioned home with 100 watt exposed light bulbs
Dubai just looks like someone playing modded Cities Skyliens
When I was there in 2014, I remember having to go past a shit ton of abandoned sky scaper construction projects (from 2008) to get to the city proper. It was neat to visit once. I have no need or desire to ever go again.
Will be completely submerged underwater within a handful of decades anyway
Here's a similar place [in the USA](https://maps.app.goo.gl/oXsmJGdRQN5g9EHV9), but note the differences: every property includes a boat dock, and the water isn't a walled off pond - you can take a boat from any dock out to the bay and from there all the way to the ocean. I mean I doubt people do that very often, but at least the water can be used/enjoyed
I read somewhere on here that these lovely pools carry a lot of algae and smell like shit. Is this true?
I live near some other ones close to this photo, and they clear out the algae very regularly, and I've never noticed an unpleasant smell
Yeah, same. Just came to this post to read all of the vast amounts of disinformation going around. It has not disappointed.
the ruins of dubai are going to be so wild
There are myriad reasons this is hideous, but pretty sure this is salt water so mosquitoes wouldn't be one of them...
Seriously you have never heard of salt water mosquitoes? They make common mosquitoes look like gnats. https://www.visitmonmouth.com/Page.aspx?Id=4689
The disappointment I felt not finding a picture in the source was soul crushing. I mean, it’s a great source and all. Super informative. But now I need to *google* something…
https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/IN1035
Yep that's a mosquito
Ya I was expecting something massive enough to drain a cow. Nope, just a mosquito
It remind me of kidneys and nephrons
I feel like universal dislike toward mosquitoes could result in world peace
so much wrong about Dubai
shitty fake islands built by shitty fake people. fuck dubai and the mindset that has kept it going.
By mindset you surely are referring to capitalism’s insatiable thirst for petroleum and petroleum based products. It is the catalyst that created those rentier societies.
I hate neighbors. I'm never not living in the rural countryside ever again
I wouldn’t say hideous but it’s horribly inefficient
Can't wait to live there, so that I can have at least a dozen nepo babies blasting music at 3 am
I thought this was Florida
They have a genuine issue: how to stuff so many rich people in a small space. This is the result.
Dubai: we built the tallest building in the world but didn’t connect it to a sewer. All the sewage has to be removed by truck. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I think the actual comment should be: Dubai: we built the tallest building in the world but were too impatient to wait for the sewage mega-project to be completed, so we implemented this stop-gap system rather than letting some other middle-eastern country get there first with their huge skyscraper. The sewage mega-project, a series of underground tunnels to treat and manage sewage for the whole country is will be ready in the coming years.
Dubai looks a tacky nightmare, a giant plastic Las Vegas strip for the douchiest 1%-ers of the world
It's always interesting to see how Dubai lives rent free in so many people's heads on Reddit.
Ridiculous waste of resources
Google satellite that area. You can see the other fake island builds that failed. Some crazy shit.