Dubai and Abu Dhabi: Oil, Glamor, and The Future

Published 04/24/2025 in Scholar Travel Stipend

Written by Steven Li | 04/24/2025

Dubai was the city of the biggest, grandest, tallest. It started with the Emirates plane — the world’s largest passenger plane — on the way to the UAE. Stepping out of one of the world’s few double decker planes, we arrived at one of the world’s largest airports.

Dubai: The Biggest, Grandest, Tallest

Customs seemed more like a line at a mall — high white ceilings, grand Roman-esque columns, LED screens all over like Times Square. Even the Starbucks was more reminiscent of a Manhattan Starbucks Reserve than a typical corner store spot.

Our days in Dubai were filled by more of the biggest, grandest, tallest. We visited the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, followed by the world’s biggest mall, the Dubai Mall. And within the mall, there’s the world’s largest OLED screen, then the largest fountain show, and even the largest aquarium in a mall — if there was competition for that title.

We also visited the Palm Jumeriah, a completely artificial island, as the name suggests, in the shape of a palm tree. From the start of the project to when residents moved in, the entire operation took only six years. In the US, that probably would’ve taken at least twenty years, maybe longer.

I can’t quite explain how crazy it was to see the island in person. Cars drove down the trunk of the palm as hotels and mega mansions piled upon the leaves and outer crescent.

The sheer amount of wealth was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Streets were incredibly clean and safe. For a country to be established in the 70s and become one of the largest global centers of the world is incredible. In just one generation, they’ve built not only a couple buildings, but the biggest, grandest, tallest.

Abu Dhabi: Oil, Sophistication, Power

Abu Dhabi is the source of the majority of the UAE’s wealth and power. The discovery of oil in 1958 has defined its politics and economy, shaping its roads, buildings, and foreign policy stances.

In Abu Dhabi, much of the grandeur remained the same, but as the capital, it reflected a more uptight atmosphere. Our tour guide joked that Abu Dhabi was the UAE’s stuffy uncle or sophisticated aunt, the older, more formal counterpart to Dubai. Instead of incessantly tall buildings, there was the Louvre (yes, they paid $1B USD for the name), national palace, Masdar City grand mosque, Abrahamic family house, but of course the buildings that are almost built for the record, like Capital Gate — the world’s furthest leaning manmade tower.

Three places stood out to me in Abu Dhabi: Qasr Al Watan (the National Palace), Masdar City, and the Abrahamic Family House. Each represented a different side of the UAE’s ambitions—political power, environmental innovation, and interfaith harmony.

Qasr Al Watan: Power and the Portraits

Unlike palaces designed purely for royalty, this one was built to showcase governance. The massive chandeliers, gold-plated architecture, and vast halls were a testament to the UAE’s strategic wealth projection. The size of the national palace, which is mainly for tourists and to receive diplomats or leaders, can fit nearly seven White Houses.

The question of labor to make these grand projects kept coming to mind. With nearly 90% of the population imported from other countries, citizenship is currently not on the table for non-Emirates. The UAE had built an economic empire on imported labor—ranging from migrant workers constructing the palaces to high-powered executives driving business deals. The trade-off for this efficiency and grandeur was evident: a nation that thrives on economic opportunity but lacks the democratic voice of its majority population.

But then again, this model has functioned for the past fifty years, very effectively to rocketship the country into international influence. As an American, I’m increasingly grateful for the personal ability to question leadership, to vote, to have a say in governance. The UAE has constructed a stable, wealthy, and globally influential state, but at the cost of political freedom for most of its residents.

Masdar City: The Mirage of Sustainability

Masdar City was something we'd never seen before in the UAE—a departure from Abu Dhabi's and Dubai's oil-fueled extravaganzas. Hailed as one of the world's most ambitious environmentally friendly projects, the city would be carbon neutral thanks to solar panels, low-energy buildings, and no private cars to fuel, only autonomous electric cars.

It seemed, on the surface, like a perfect utopian vision of what the future might be like, a possible template for the post-oil world. But behind the surface, there were flaws in the dream. Our guide told us that Masdar City had not attracted residents in the numbers envisioned when it was first opened and much of the city remained unfinished, underdeveloped, or deserted.

The paradox was stark: the UAE, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, was investing billions into a city that sought to reduce dependency on fossil fuels. Was this genuine progress toward a sustainable future, or simply an attempt to polish the country’s global image? Can a country built on oil ever truly divorce itself from it? Although the technology Masdar had was impressive, how can it make more realistic steps to not just greenwashing but transitioning into a sustainable future.

The Abrahamic Family House: Religious Tolerance

If one location encapsulated the UAE's diplomatic ambitions, it was the Abrahamic Family House. A colossal interfaith complex, it housed a mosque, a church, and a synagogue—each built to be of identical size and stature, a square perfect in all ways. It was an intentional gesture of religious tolerance, an architectural representation of the UAE's position in the Abraham Accords and its broader attempts to cast itself as a cultural bridge.

It was hard not to be impressed by the concept. The Middle East has long been a region of religious strife, and to have all three of the world's Abrahamic religions under one roof was compelling. The Abrahamic Family House represented what the UAE wants the world to see: a nation embracing tolerance, modernity, and interfaith dialogue. But how does this vision extend beyond carefully curated spaces into everyday life? At the end of the day, the country runs on an authoritarian system.

Final Reflections on the UAE: Oil, Influence, and the Future

One of the most thought-provoking conversations we had was with a professor from NYU Abu Dhabi, who reminded us that the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries hold nearly a third of the world’s oil reserves. The UAE, alongside Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, will continue to wield immense influence—not just in energy markets, but in geopolitics, global finance, and technological investments. While some assume the Gulf states will lose relevance as the world moves toward renewable energy, our discussions made it clear that the UAE has no intention of fading quietly. They are diversifying—investing in AI, space exploration, tourism, and sustainability projects like Masdar City.

For all of Dubai’s biggest, grandest, tallest achievements and Abu Dhabi’s sophisticated, oil-funded power, the UAE remains a country of paradoxes—a monarchy that champions innovation, a petroleum empire striving for sustainability, and a global business hub where most residents will never be citizens. The question for the future is not whether the UAE will remain relevant, but rather how it will navigate its contradictions.