Dubai Palm Island

Some contemporary projects are much more ambitious. In 1994, Kansai International Airport was the first general aviation commercial airport to be built completely on an artificial island, followed by Chubu Centrair International Airport in 2005 and the New Kitakyushu Airport and Kobe Airport in 2006. Also Dubai is home to some of the largest artificial island complexes in the world, including the three Palm Islands macroprojects. The World and the Dubai Waterfront macro-projects, the last of which will be the largest in geographical extent (Fig. 55.3). 

As a result of the strong growth of the world s population and the subsequent urbanisation and economic development, in particular in densely populated coastal areas, the last decades have witnessed an ever-increasing demand for new land. This demand has resulted in a large number of reclamation projects ranging from numerous small-scale projects all over the world to well-known, large-scale projects such as the Palm Island Project in Dubai or the constmction of Maasvlakte 2 in Rotterdam Europoort, The Netherlands (see Figure 1.1). 

Furthermore, the Burj Dubai lacks the unexpected brashness of other Dubai-based ventures such as a 26-story tall ski-slope in the desert, a water park ran on desalinized water, an artificial Palm Tree-shaped island wrapped with a line of poetry that translates in part from Arabic as not everyone who rides a horse is... 

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