Images from space shows exactly how Dubai, and other cities around the world, have changed in the last 30 years.

The progress and development of the Dubai emirate has been a remarkable one. 

The city of Dubai evolved and expanded from the simple life of the desert into the skyscrapers, mega structures and reclaimed land projects to which we see today.  

Over the last 30 years, Dubai has grown into the home of some of the world’s most famous structures, such as the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Al Arab and the Palm Islands, with the capacity to accommodate over 3 million people. 

During the city’s initial phase of development, NASA was able to capture a photo of Dubai from 1984 with its Landsat programme, which shows the altered coastline, artificial land, buildings and ports. 

NASA also released images to compare Las Vegas in 1984 and 2009. And now, in 2018, the city in Nevada, US, has grown from 540,000 people to 2.1 million people.

Before

After

NASA also showed the changes in the city of Shanghai, China, from 1984 to 2016.

The space agency described Shanghai as a “relatively compact industrial city of 12 million people in 1982 [that] had swollen to 24 million in 2016, making it one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world”.

Before

After

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Gulf News on Monday June 18th, 2018 http://bit.ly/GulfNewsNasa