A city on the sand, a mesmerizing mirage? ....more questions than answers.

If someone were to ask me to describe this place I might say that Dubai strikes me most as a glittering city built on sand. A towering achievement? Certainly...with much more to come. But, to what purpose? Are we enlightened and uplifted in our humanity by these ambitious monuments? What do they represent? What are they built upon?

These photos were taken from the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.  A towering monument to engineering that made me wish we had a team of architects and engineers in our group.

How do they build these mammoth structures? What lies beneath to hold up these towering spires and minarets? How will they tackle the problems of water, population explosion, religious extremism and the inevitable scarcity of resources? What happened to the Arab Spring? What lies ahead for Islam and the reformation movement? At the end of the day...there are more questions than answers.