Happy Friday. This is The Shake 🤝: the free newsletter that rides the fine line between humor and interesting real estate topics each week.

Here’s what we got for you:

• Dubai’s Sewage System Overhaul 🗑️ 

MARKET RADAR

Dubai Is Getting Their 💩 Together

Dubai, like many rapidly growing urban areas around the world, faces sewage and wastewater management challenges.

The city has experienced substantial population growth and urban development over the past few decades, which has put pressure on its infrastructure.

But they are ready to throw big money at the challenge, giving the green light to spend over $21 billion on a sewerage system plan that will serve the city for the next century. It’s poised to be one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of the Middle East.

The new system will be designed to meet the growing needs of Dubai's population, which is expected to reach 3.5 million by 2030. It will also help to reduce their reliance on groundwater, which is currently used to flush toilets and water gardens.

With a goal to cut carbon emissions by 25%, Dubai is ready to set new benchmarks for sustainable cities.

But it wasn’t always like this.

One infamous video in 2009 brings back memories of their once primitive sewage system where they had to use ‘poop’ trucks to haul out waste from some of their city center buildings - one of them being the iconic Burj Khalifa.

We discovered that Dubai was so focused on developing world-class buildings to attract tourists and residents that they didn’t address (or want to spend $ on) the capacity issue of their city sewer infrastructure once the toilets started flushing.

They were spread thin…

For example, the Burj Khalifa can house 35,000 residents at any given time. This comes out to about 7,000,000 grams of waste every day plus the water used to drive the waste which equals about 15 tons of sewage per day.

By the time they realized the challenge, they were already in too deep 💩 .

Their short-term (and most affordable) solution was sewage trucks, which had to wait hours in line at the treatment plant every single day...

This process created a negative stigma around the cleanliness of Dubai and how seriously city officials were handling the situation.

These trucks were in operation for a few years until health and sanitation concerns started to rise among the general population.

By 2011, city officials pledged $8 billion to revamp their sewage system to accommodate future growth and developed another treatment facility called Jebel Ali to serve the rest of the city when linked to the main sewage network.

The newly added capacity covered the city sprawl and eliminated the need for the ‘poop’ trucks. Larger buildings were now connected to the main central sewage system.

We imagine there were some celebrations for this achievement.

Yet still today, as Dubai steadily grows and urbanizes, its sewage infrastructure continues to expand at a costly rate.

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^{DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.}