Every futurist’s mood board includes designs beyond the dream, 3D-printed buildings, self-driving cars, and new mass-transit ideas. The city where those dreams look closest to real, through finished and ongoing projects, is Dubai.
Here is what the city of the future is building, with notes compiled by Futurism:
Museum of the Future
Most museums remind us of the past. The museum Dubai aimed to open in December 2018 does the opposite: share the future. Under the motto “See the future, create the future” it is meant to be more than a gallery, also an incubator for tomorrow’s tech. As the world leaves oil, the UAE’s move signals it wants power in the next era too.
Robot Olympics
Dubai will host robot Olympics starting in 2017 and repeating every two years, across nine events:
- Driverless car race
- Crewed drone race
- Uncrewed drone race
- Robot running race
- Robot football tournament
- Robot swimming race
- Robot table tennis
- Robot wrestling tournament
- Cybathlon (suggest a Turkish name in the comments if you like)
“The Tower”
Aimed for 2020 completion, The Tower is designed taller and more functional than Burj Khalifa peers, with a $1 billion budget, boutique hotels, vertical gardens, restaurants, and a 360-degree observation deck. With antenna it is said to reach 928 m, about 100 m above Burj Khalifa.
Hyperloop infrastructure
Another bet is a Hyperloop corridor about 105 km from Dubai to Fujairah. Design work began last September; travel between the two cities could shrink to minutes and spark a regional boom.
Drone Prix
Last March Dubai hosted the world’s first drone races. One hundred fifty pilots raced their own drones; the winning young British pilot took home $250,000.
Ziggurat Pyramid
If a company takes it on, the Ziggurat Pyramid is one of Dubai’s most ambitious goals: housing about a million people, fully self-sufficient on renewables with no underground fuel, plus a 360-degree transport system inside.
2030 driverless target
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said 25% of Dubai’s transport vehicles should be driverless and AI-backed by 2030. If it works, the Gulf pilot zone could hold one of the world’s smartest, safest mobility systems.
Man-made mountain
If the Ziggurat intrigues you, look this up too. Dubai is studying a man-made mountain to nudge its constantly hot, heating climate. The engineering and analysis are exciting; clearing geographic hurdles is the hard part. Will it finish? I am curious.
