Dubai World’s Limitless real estate developer arm has announced that work has started on the Arabian Canal, Dubai’s latest mega-development.

It will be a 75km long waterway flowing into the desert from Dubai Waterfront, which includes the massive Palm Jebel Ali island, and back out to the Gulf near Palm Jumeirah, the first and smallest of the palm-shaped islands. They say the canal, costing US$11 billion, will be the largest and most complex civil engineering project ever undertaken in the Middle East.

Gulf News graphic

The canal will run through the new Dubai Industrial City and other multi-billion dollar developments will be built along the new waterfront, including a mixed-use project which Limitless is planning as part of the master development. That will be a US$50 billion waterfront development of 20,000 hectares along 33 km of the inland section of the waterway, near the new Al Maktoum International Airport. It will be a business, residential and leisure complex serving around one million people.

The work now under way is preliminary and doesn’t include actual excavation, which is planned to start in about three months time.

The canal will be six metres deep, up to 150 metres wide and is expected to be completed in three years.