Why Dubai built a palm-shaped island

Transcript

This Palm-shaped island in Dubai isn't shaped this way for the reason you might think. It's actually a genius solution to a math problem. In the early 2000s, Dubai wanted to become a global tourism hub, but it only had about 72 kilometers of natural coastline. And in a beach city, the waterfront is the most valuable real estate there is. So the question was, how do you make the most beachfront out of a fixed coastline? You see, a round island the same size would create limited waterfront homes, but a palm tree with 17 narrow fronts becomes 17 shorelines. It added about 56 kilometers of new coastline, enough for thousands of waterfront villas, apartments, and hotels. Today, there are about 25,000 residents. Palm-Jumara is one of the most famous islands on Earth and was built for $12 billion. In fact, the idea worked so well that Dubai is building a second Palm island twice as big, just 20 minutes down the coast.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.