Guess it's true what they say: Everything is bigger in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates city recently announced plans to one up itself, by yet again by building the world's largest shopping mall with plans for a new mega-development complete with a shopping centre that could welcome 80 million people a year, said the New York Daily News.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, ruler of the Gulf desert city-state, announced the plan for a "new city within Dubai," which he plans to humbly name after himself, according to an official statement.
The new city within the city will cost around $2.7 billion to construct, will reportedly boast up to 100 hotels, and will be connected to five distinct theme parks based on films, animals and characters from brands all over the world that will be the largest in the region, according to the Daily News. Universal Studios already plans to build an attraction there, and there will also be a Bollywood theme park that will perform musicals "aimed at attracting Indian visitors and enriching Dubai's cultural calendar," said The Daily Mail.
The Mohammed bin Rashid City, as it area will be called, will be located just outside the city's current downtown area. The mall will pack in something for everyone, including a water and marine life park that can reportedly annually host 16 million patrons, a children's theme park dedicated to safaris and adventures in the desert, as well as museums, and art galleries.
The shopping center will overtake the Dubai Mall once it's constructed to become the world record holder for largest mall, and will formally be called Mall of the World, according to the Daily Mail. A public park area that is expected to be 30 percent larger than London's Hyde Park will surround the retail fortress.
Al-Maktoum's Dubai Holding and the publicly listed Emaar Properties, which "developed many of Dubai's prestigious projects, including Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest tower," will carry out the project, says the Daily News. The plan also features new residential areas, although the emirate continues to have a surplus of units built during a five-year bubble, which burst in 2009.
Dubai already has too many malls and hotels to count, but "The current facilities available in Dubai need to be scaled up in line with the future ambitions for the city," Sheikh Mohammed said in the statement. The city's goal is to become "the capital of entrepreneurship, arts, culture and family tourism for over 2 billion people," he added.
Dubai's tourism is growing by 13 percent a year, according to his statement, with hotel occupancy hitting 82 percent in 2011, while hotel revenues grew 22 percent last year, exceeding 16 billion dirhams ($4.4 billion).
Dubai experienced a debt crisis in autumn 2009, rocking global financial markets, but after restructuring the towering debt owed by its corporations its economy has been steadily rebounding ever since, the Daily News reported.
Al-Maktoum plans to begin work immediately and will have the first phase completed in 2014, the Daily Mail said.
