Dubai, Home to World’s Largest Mall, Plans Bigger One

State news agency WAM says the planned development on the city's desert outskirts will include luxury hotels and a major theme park, a goal derailed by Dubai's fiscal meltdown in 2009.
 
No timetable was announced Sunday for the Mohammed Bin Rashid City.Emaar Properties PJSC (EMAAR), the United Arab Emirates’ largest developer by market value, and Dubai Holding LLC will together build a district called “Mohammed Bin Rashid City,” named after the Persian Gulf emirate’s ruler. The project near central Dubai is to include 100 hotels, residential areas and green spaces.
 
But it allows Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to put his personal moniker on a mega-project after the country's president, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, took the honor for the record-tall Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai.

Dubai already has bragging rights to the biggest emporium by total area, Dubai Mall, which sprawls opposite the planet’s tallest skyscraper, Burj Khalifa. Between these two Emaar structures is a man-made lake where the world’s largest dancing fountain shoots water 50 stories high.

Dubai, seeking to stimulate its economy, wants to resume several projects that halted after the global credit crunch drove down property values by 65 percent and caused companies to suspend construction of hundreds of developments. Builders in the U.A.E. have aborted about $757 billion of projects since the crisis, Citigroup said in a report on Oct. 16. Dubai is the country’s second-largest emirate, after Abu Dhabi.