The Recession's Officially Over

When I was in Dubai in 2007, the sky was the limit. Literally!

The Burj Khalifa, proposed as the world’s tallest building, was zooming up and up and up – to the clouds, through the clouds, to the top of the beanstalk.

Dubai proudly trumpeted all the statistics: nearly 3000 feet high, 160 stories, tallest building in the world, highest number of stories, highest occupied floor, elevator with the longest travel distance; even the tallest service elevator.

Why was it important for a desert sheikdom to build the tallest, biggest, largest, greatest, longest? Because it could. That’s how mighty little Dubai measured things in 2007.

Hey, it had a mall in the middle of the desert with an operational ski slope! Anything at all seemed possible. Anything was possible.

Then the worldwide recession hit, and Dubai had to face its dose of the new reality. This is a country, remember, built not on oil, but on trade, banking and tourism.

According to accounts I read, Dubai was one of the worst hit cities in the world, and business life came to a practical halt. Dubai’s economy came to a standstill.

Since so much of Dubai has been about appearance, the current appearance is that the standstill is over! An industry friend just sent me renderings of the new Mall of the World, courtesy of GulfNews.com.

It’s not that Dubai lacks huge, high-end, multi-purpose malls. Its two big centers at the moment have a ski slope, skating rink, dinosaur exhibit and multi-story aquarium. But they’re called the Dubai Mall and the Mall of the Emirates, names that clearly do not reach high enough to suit the Dubaians. The Mall of the World is said to be 8 million square feet, which would make it roughly twice the size of Mall of America. (Just America? What were they thinking when they named that behemoth in Minneapolis in 1992?)

It will have hundreds of stores, of course. But also 100 hotels with about 20,000 rooms, a restaurant and cultural district, a theater district and a medical district, apartments and a theme park, all under one climate-controlled roof. Clearly, people who can afford to visit this desert don’t want to be reminded that they’re in the desert.

Dubai has long seemed to be the international model of conspicuous consumption – overbuilding, overreaching, overextending – but in this case there’s a method to all the madness. It will host the World Expo in 2020 and infrastructure needs to be in place. Not just shopping, dining and hotels, but also better roads, better traffic control and better sanitation.

That’s all part of the $8.4 billion Dubai is expected to spend on this event. But it will generate about $23 billion. The math works.

Beyond that, though, it’s evidence that the world must be recovering. Dubai depends on international solvency. The Mall of the World seems proof that it’s back.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.