Updated: March 17, 2024

It’s twenty years and counting since the construction of the man-made islands of Dubai began, the world’s largest artificial island. Famously known as the star project of the urban development of the United Emirates, two decades later, the story is very different from what everyone would have imagined. Islands yet to be completed, abandoned projects, the sea reclaiming its space… What exactly is wrong with Dubai, and how did its economy become so unstable?