Friday 6 February 2009

The future of the Emirates' capital


Oil-rich Abu Dhabi may have become an opulent oasis in the desert, but the forest of high-rise buildings that scrape its perpetual blue sky only hint at things to come.


This capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a fishing and pearling village of mud and palm-frond huts until oil was discovered here 50 years ago, may lack the millennia of colourful history and relics of Middle Eastern cities such as Cairo and Beirut.

But it aims at becoming one of the region's major cultural centres, with future projects costed in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

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