'Futuristic' Dubai Expo to open one year late
Delayed by the pandemic, Dubai is ready to take its turn on the world stage with its $6.8 billion showcase expo.
Expo 2020 Dubai will finally open one year late on Oct. 1 as one of the first global events since worldwide lockdowns.
The year 2020 remains stamped in the expo logo, and that prompts some reflection on how expos craft the future. Since the earliest exhibitions, expos have sought to express that technology can bring the world closer together. In 19th-century expo stagings in Europe, this was mostly a spatial pursuit. Most visitors had never ventured far from home. For them, an expo offered a compressed, if inaccurate, world tour. At the 1889 expo in Paris, for example, one could cross the street from a simulation of Japan to one of Morocco and then enter Egypt before heading to Iran.
Futurama at the 1939 New York City world’s fair marked a significant shift. That year, visitors queued for hours at a pavilion sponsored by General Motors. They were promised a glimpse of the future, specifically of the United States in 1960. Unsurprisingly, the American automaker displayed a future in love with the car. A nation of driver-citizens was to create self-styled voyages. The typical expo visitor today likely owns both a car and a frequent flyer card. Now, when an overseas flight can cost less than a bus ride, exhibitors continue to mimic Futurama, shifting focus to a kind of travel not yet available: time travel.
Global media outlets often describe Dubai as “futuristic.” When expo officials eight years ago selected Dubai to host the event, it seemed like a perfect match. In a city where deadlines are met on time and with ceremony, what could go wrong? An exhibition for the future in a city of the future. A Hollywood actor in one plug for the expo asks, “Want to see the future? Come on.”
