This is the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The vast road and rail links
cost $10 billion to build and a further $1.2 billion every year since to maintain.
But its enormous capacity is under-utilized, and the stadiums are becoming white elephants,
just like sporting venues in Cape Town, New Delhi, Rio and Beijing.
Fast forward several years and a whole
city has been built in the desert to host an international exhibition.
For six months, Dubai hosted Expo 2020, a global celebration of more than 190 countries, showcasing
their innovations and cultures. And while there have been significant challenges putting together
this event in a pandemic, this sprawling site is set to become a city of the future.
This is the first time that a World Expo has come to this part of the world.
Nadia Verjee is chief of staff for Expo 2020.
Looking at issues, looking at business, looking at collaboration with people around the world
has really been the epicenter for Dubai, in the UAE, through the last six months.
Construction costs for the event were estimated at about $7 billion,
with the United Arab Emirates even financing several countries’ pavilions,
including the U.S. pavilion, to the tune of $60 million.
It's also cost a lot of money to put on an event like this. How do you measure that investment,
and work out whether this is all worth it?
The investment really wasn't for the event. The investment was for building
the city. And so, everything that we put in place was built for permanency.
80% of what we've built as Expo will remain, which is actually the majority of the permanent
structures that we've put in place. Naturally, as we redesign the master plan for District 2020,
some of that will change, based also on the participation of the countries.
District 2020, rebranded as Expo City Dubai in June 2022 after my visit, is the new residential
and business hub taking over the Expo site. The district’s designers wanted sustainability
to sit at the heart of this community in the desert. Yet even with the long-term proposal,
many of the multi-million-dollar pavilions will be torn down, but not all.
Some countries’ purpose-built pavilions
are remaining here as part of District 2020. Luxembourg’s sustainability-focused pavilion
will stay here to continue to highlight the challenges around natural resources.
The Expo’s centerpiece, the Al Wasl plaza will remain as a staging venue,
while the Sustainability Pavilion will become a children’s and science center. Other notable
structures amongst the 123 buildings that will be repurposed include the Mobility Pavilion,
which will be used to host temporary exhibitions. The UAE pavilion will be a visitor attraction and
cultural meeting place. Saudi Arabia’s pavilion will continue to showcase green innovations across
the region, while India’s pavilion will be used to host engagements for the UAE’s sizable Indian
expat community. The Dubai exhibition center will convert into office space. There are also plans to
retain the water feature and garden in the sky, which were both big attractions during the Expo.
We've offered every single country the option to stay, to talk about what they would want to
see as the legacy of their own experience, whether they're companies or universities
or industries that would like to use the facility that they've built to maintain
a presence here. So, this really continues to live and breathe the ethos of the Expo,
but it will naturally graduate into its next phase, whatever that looks like.
So, what will it look like? Well, the area is spread out over 1,000 acres
and will provide homes and office spaces for up to 145,000 residents. The city will also be made up
of leisure facilities and exercise grounds, including more than 6 miles of bike tracks,
3 miles of jogging tracks and nearly 500,000 square feet of parks and gardens.
There will also be a mall, a metro station and road access to three highways.
How big a challenge is Dubai undertaking with trying to transition
District 2020 into a functioning city?
It's a huge challenge. Because if we look at
the history of the World Expo, they tend to become white elephants.
Because of the huge impact it has on the city, because the World Expo sites are enormous.
And after the event is gone, it's been very difficult to find a new function for that site.
Tim Van Vrijaldenhoven is an expert in urban planning. He’s worked on large-scale
infrastructure and transportation projects,
such as the construction of the Abu Dhabi airport in the mid-2000s.
What I like about Dubai, about this idea, is that the infrastructure is, for a large amount,
already in place, but that’s only one part of the story. The other part of the story
is how you’re going to attract residents, business, all sorts of things, afterwards,
and I think that's even harder than just making the infrastructure available.
The planners of Expo City Dubai are hoping that modern technology
and a focus on sustainability will be a big part of its attraction.
It’s supposed to become the world’s largest city to have full
5G mobile coverage and will be the UAE’s first 15-minute city, which means anything
a resident needs can be reached within a quarter of an hour on foot or by bike.
It will also be the first community in the region to be WELL certified, a roadmap and
rating system which aims to create public spaces that enhance our health and wellbeing.
But there are concerns around the high temperatures in this part of the world and how
appropriate it is to create a new city focused on walking and cycling in those conditions.
Natural ventilation and evaporation is definitely going to help. But yeah,
it's still going to be 50 degrees out there. So, it's still going to be
a challenge. We can solve a lot of things with technology, but at the same time,
there are already a lot of other challenges to make this work. So, this comes on top of that.
Residents and companies are expected to begin moving onto the site from late 2022.
German tech conglomerate Siemens, for instance, plans to open a new office near the Al Wasl dome
with a 250 strong workforce that includes engineers and researchers.
How important is making sure that you do deliver
in a timely manner, so that you don't lose that momentum?
What I've learned from analyzing all the World Expos over the last,
let's say almost 200 years now. Momentum is everything. If you sit down and wait
for a couple of months after the Expo is gone, basically, the entire momentum is
gone. And then you see nobody's willing or able to take another step forward.
It really is sort of an open place that will continue to live and breathe as it
evolves into its next phase. So, there's no specific timeline, per se, but it really
is an ongoing process just to continue to mature into what we aspire for it to become.
If and when Expo City Dubai’s grand designs are realized,
it could become a template for how to plan for life after hosting large events.
It may also set the standard for developing the layout of modern cities.