Like Sand Through An Hourglass

Death of an unsustainable pipe dream.

Off the Deep End: A Look at the Decline of Dubai

"As expats take flight, indebted and disillusioned, they leave behind relics of their former lives: new cars, left to accumulate dust and the comments of passersby. The government will not release numbers, but it's estimated that more than 3,000 abandoned cars have been found in 2009, many with keys in the ignition, an apology note on the windshield, or maxed-out credit cards in the glove compartment. Dubai once seemed like a sure thing. But as one departing expat notes, "At the end of the day, it's not our country. So if we're made redundant, we have to go home."

"When Dubai upgraded its waste-disposal infrastructure some years ago, it failed to anticipate the population explosion. Today, large swathes of the city have no sewage connections, so it is collected by hundreds of trucks and ferried into the desert to Dubai's only sewage repository, 35 miles outside city limits. During the boom, the trip took as long as 17 hours (depopulation has since cut that time), and it became routine for drivers to short-circuit the process by dumping into drainpipes along the way, sending the waste flowing back to Dubai to reappear on its upscale beaches."