The Pearl’s Social and Environmental Failures: Development Challenges

Abstract

Identifying the problems in past construction and communicating those lessons in future development will aid the process of successful innovation. This chapter identifies the social and environmental failures of Qatar’s Pearl Island, in order to analyze how MIA Park and Hamad Port overcome those challenges. Through the qualitative research process, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants and sequences of photographs have been utilized to construct visual investigation. The results demonstrate how Qatar has learnt from past development failures and applied the knowledge in their new ventures. These projects still have several design and construction flaws that require revaluation if Qatar hopes to move forward with their sustainability initiatives. According to the Global Footprint Network, Qatar, alongside other wealthy Gulf states, has the world’s largest ecological footprint per person. Lucrative gas and oil revenue, since the 1970s, has rapidly allowed the Middle East to develop and create desert cities with budgets exceeding billions of dollars to create unique landscapes few places in the world could match. Qatar’s growth in the past decade has been especially tremendous, with the total population increasing by one million, enabling the country’s urban districts to conceptualize artificial islands and mega-structures that have been poorly developed as a result of short-term thinking. This chapter looks at the development of these human settlement projects in light of their immense social and environmental repercussions.