6. Jumeriah Palm
Where: United Arab Emirates
Completed Cost: $12 Billion*; Year Completed: 2006
Affordably funded by the substantial revenue generated by Dubai’s petroleum production, the construction of the Palm Jumeriah cost over $12 billion. Additionally, it was completed in just six years, which is comparatively speedy for a project of that size.
Shutterstock/DDelpixel Palm Jumeriah
The 120 million cubic meters of sand that were removed from the ocean floor to build the trunk and branches of the Palm Jumeriah “tree” were precisely sprayed by a fleet of dredgers working around the clock using a sophisticated GPS system.
Situated on the beachfront of the seventeen fronds, the Palm Jumeriah’s fifteen hundred homes and six thousand apartments on the trunk together occupy an area equivalent to around six hundred soccer fields. Three times the circle of the earth’s circumference could be built using the same quantity of sand that was used to build the Palm Jumeriah.
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