Dubai likes to market itself as a city of the future. With the Expo2020, Dubai wants to show that environmental protection and huge spectacles are compatible. Did that work?

Expo2020 in Dubai aims to show 25 million visitors what the future looks like. The Emirates promise that this Expo will not only be more spectacular than its predecessors, but also more future-oriented and sustainable. Yet the venue, Dubai, is a major climate polluter: the city has an indoor ski slope in the middle of the desert, an artificial island on a coral reef, the tallest building and the largest shopping mall in the world. And yet the emirate of Dubai, which has produced all these gigantic construction projects, wants to become a pioneer in climate protection. Expo2020 is intended to serve as a showcase for these aspirations.

However, it is obvious that environmental protection and a huge spectacle are not so easy to reconcile: 70 percent of the expected 25 million Expo visitors will come from abroad and therefore have to fly in. How sustainable can an Expo be that was only built for show purposes?

The feature was broadcast on Deutschlandfunk.