Don't try to wrap your rational mind around Dubai. It is Babel in every sense. Well, no. That's not fair. You wanna know what Dubai is? Dubai is a stab at immortality from a nomadic culture that has enjoyed three generations of spectacular wealth on a resource that is already dwindling, built to leverage a financial system already in decline. Dubai is Lehman Brothers as architecture. Something else to keep in mind about tall buildings: In the United States, we're still getting over the shock of September 11. Once the Twin Towers came down, pretty much everyone in America thought "we must never build tall buildings again, Arabs will smash into them." Every non-aligned power in the world, however, took that moment to say "fuck the dollar, it's me-time." So while you or I can sit around and think "tall buildings aren't cool any more" most every developing culture is busy attempting to become Mad Men. Take the geopolitic of 1960's USA and overlay it over 2010's China. You'll see more similarities than differences.