226 THE BiG DROP
tiple apartments in projects with waiting lists and flipping them
for quick gains.
But alongside this revival of confidence, I found a great
deal of skepticism and concern. Bankers and investors are now
less worried about Dubai than the world around them.
Everything from U.S. political dysfunction to Russian ad-
venturism in Ukraine, African Ebola and the rise of the Islamic
State seems to cast a shadow on whatever upbeat news is
emerging from Dubai. Above all, the sense that the world is
nearing another global financial meltdown worse than 2008
is foremost in the minds of many I spoke with.
Notwithstanding this generalized global gloom, it was
clear from my conversations and observations that Dubai has
recovered financially and is once again in an upbeat mood.
Despite the overbuilding that led to the crash in 2009, new
construction can be seen everywhere.
There were five new skyscrapers being built in a row imme-
diately adjacent to my hotel, the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai.
The hotel itself is relatively new; it was completed in 2013,
and is the world’s tallest hotel, at 1,166 feet.
The most visible sign of Dubai’s comeback is the Burj
Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, with 163 floors, at over
2,700 feet high. Everything in Dubai, it seems, is over the top.
The Burj Khalifa opened shortly before my 2011 visit, but
this recent visit was my first chance to go to the top observatory.
What was most impressive, perhaps, was not the view,
which one can see from an airplane, but the elevator ride. It
took 40 seconds to rise 1,500 feet, and the elevator was silent
(except for some piped-in disco music as we prepared to dis-
embark) and produced no vibration or sense of motion.
It was a masterpiece of 21st-century engineering that com-
bined precise manufacture with computerized performance.
I recalled my first trip to the top of the World Trade Center in
New York in 1975. That elevator trip involved heavy vibration,