Do you know Dubai, the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates?

Dubai is the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates. Like other Middle Eastern cities, Dubai is rich from oil. But for a new city with ambitions to show off its capabilities in the new century, oil is certainly not everything. It opened the door to vigorously develop tourism. Due to its high-quality environment and rich and colorful culture (because 80% of the population are foreigners), most tourists to Dubai are high-income groups such as models, artists, and businessmen.

Dubai is the most important free trade port, economic and trade center and largest aviation hub in the Middle East. It is known as the "Hong Kong of the Middle East"; Dubai has abolished income tax and consumption tax and is a world-famous duty-free zone; Dubai It has chosen a development path that is different from other countries in the Gulf region, which is to strive to become the world's financial center. Dubai has made full use of its resources, building luxury resorts and shopping venues, and opening its doors to investors and settlers. Among them, the picturesque white sand beaches and year-round sunshine have become the biggest highlights that attract people.

However, by the 1990s, all beaches in Dubai were developed and development encountered a bottleneck. In order to solve this problem, Dubai decided to build an artificial island, and the Palm Island Project, an unprecedented scale of artificial island construction plan, was born.

Overlooking Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from a high altitude, two huge palm trees can be vaguely seen floating on the blue sea. After careful identification, the palm trees are actually composed of some scattered islands of various sizes. In addition to palm trees, you can also see a world map outlined by 300 islands. The shrinking France, Florida, and Ohio in the United States are included, and even Antarctica, which was originally covered with ice and snow, is under the scorching local sun.

The Palm Island project is planned to cost US$14 billion and is expected to be completed in 2009. By then, the world's largest artificial island will have completely surfaced.

The Palm Island Project consists of four island groups including Palm Jumeirah, Alishan Palm Island, Palm Deira and World Island. It plans to build 12,000 private residences and more than 10,000 apartments. , also includes more than 100 luxury hotels as well as facilities such as ports, water theme parks, restaurants, shopping malls and diving venues. In addition, an underwater hotel, the world's tallest skyscraper, an indoor ski resort, and a main park the size of Dubai are also planned.

The huge artificial island construction plan shows Dubai's determination to compete with Singapore and Hong Kong to become the world's commercial port center, and to compete with Las Vegas to become the world's leisure capital. Although the Palm Island project will not be completed until 5 years later, surprisingly, most of the properties have been sold out, and some properties are still in the sea on the map.

The UAE government is determined to build Palm Island into one of the best tourist destinations in the world. To this end, they invited 42 companies to spend three years and form a final feasibility plan through more than 100 studies on transportation, marine ecology, population density and commercial development.

They will build two palm tree-shaped artificial islands in the port city of Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, namely Palm Jumeirah and Palm Ali Gaba. Each artificial island is like a reflection cast by a palm tree. The reason why it was built in the shape of a palm tree is that the palm tree symbolizes victory and the perfect geometric shape of the palm tree can maximize the length of the UAE's coastline. These two palm islands will increase the UAE's coastline by 120 kilometers, an increase of 166%.

This is an unprecedented man-made project. If the sand and rock used to build each palm island were built into a wall two meters high and half a meter thick, the wall would circle the earth three times. The rocks are sourced from 16 quarries in the UAE. After the two palm islands were built, due to their huge size and strange shape, astronauts could see them with the naked eye from space.

Each island consists of three parts: "trunk", "canopy" and crescent-shaped dam. There will also be 12,000 palm trees planted on the island, and these saplings are being cultivated at a nursery in Jumeirah. The entire island is a huge summer resort and tourist paradise. It has 2,400 seaside houses and can accommodate 5,000 people. In addition, there are facilities such as sports fields, gyms and cinemas.

The entire project has started at the end of 2001. In a few years, we will be able to go to Palm Island and enjoy the taste of paradise on earth under the palm trees