Palm Jumeirah Public Beach

Palm Jumeirah is an artificial archipelago off Dubai, built between 2001 and 2006 from dredged sand and quarried rock in the shape of a palm tree. The public beach on its western crescent is the ordinary end of an extraordinary piece of engineering.

The scale is the record. Something in the order of ninety million cubic metres of sand were dredged from the Gulf floor and placed without steel or concrete piling, held by a rock breakwater eleven kilometres long, and the island's shape was chosen to maximise waterfront frontage rather than for any hydrodynamic reason. The consequences were studied afterwards rather than before: circulation in the water behind the fronds is poor, and the marine habitat that was dredged did not return.

The beach itself is imported pale sand on a sheltered shore inside the breakwater, with no swell, a gradual engineered entry and water that reaches over thirty degrees in late summer. There is no reef and nothing to snorkel. The view is back across the water at the Dubai Marina skyline, which is the point.

Development is complete: hotels along the crescent, a monorail, restaurants and a public beach with parking, showers and lifeguards. Access to most of the frontage is through hotels; the public sections are marked and free. The World and Deira islands, built in the same programme, tell the other half of the story: The World remains largely undeveloped two decades on, and the sand for all of them came from the same seabed.

Ninety million cubic metres of dredged sand in the shape of a palm, chosen for frontage rather than for hydrodynamics, with the environmental studies done afterwards. Swim in the free public sections, look back at the skyline, and note that you are standing on ground that was sea within living memory.