Now, it’s history.
The pandemic-delayed Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates closes on Thursday after eight years of anticipation, over $7 billion in investment, 240 million hours of labor and six months of festivities.
The fate of the fairgrounds is clear. Some national pavilions will be demolished. A few will remain, like an enormous lacework dome and the UAE’s soaring falcon-shaped pavilion. Other buildings will be rebranded for a new business district soon to rise from the site.
But the deeper legacy of the event proves more elusive.
When Dubai won the bid to host Expo in 2013, it felt like a rebirth. Just four years earlier, the glitzy city-state suffered a real-estate crash in the Great Recession, rescued by a $20 billion bailout from oil-rich Abu Dhabi.
As property prices roared back, the Expo — the first world’s fair in the Middle East — appeared to signal Dubai’s troubles were behind it. Officials offered bright predictions. The “world’s greatest show” would draw 25 million visitors. It would generate $33.4 billion in investment until 2031. It would help Dubai push into the top tier of global financial centers.
But, in the end, the billions of dollars, frenzy of fantastical construction projects and barrage of publicity proved powerless against the coronavirus pandemic, which forced Dubai to postpone the event a year.
“It definitely fell short of what officials would have wanted,” said James Swanston, an economist at Capital Economics. “There were extremely optimistic assessments about Expo driving the next five to 10 years of growth in real estate and business, and COVID disrupted that.”
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