After all the hype going back to 2004 over the ambitiously planned "Dubai World Central" development the government of the United Arab Emirates went and decided to just change the name to "Dubai South."
Well, Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman of Dubai Aviation City Corporation, explained, kind of.
“The name is iconic, and will become instantly recognizable for years to come. Dubai South is the emirate’s flagship urban project that will set benchmarks for the rest of the emirate in terms of manifesting the themes of happiness as set out in Dubai Plan 2021," according to Emirates 24/7.
The vision of the DWC development – or we guess DS? development now – is to be the world's largest airport with the capacity to "handle over 200 million passengers and 16 million tonnes of cargo annually," according to the DWC website (sorry, the website name still hasn't been changed).
In addition to the world's largest airport, the development intends to have large commercial and residential sections. The residential development will be able to house some 900,000 people when completed. In total, the site will cover 140 square kilometers, which – for some perspective – is nearly double the size of Hong Kong Island. By 2020 the goal is for DWC DS to host about 20 million tourists annually.
So, really, with all the effort that has been put into this development, branding it as the gateway between East and West, setting it up as the host location of the World Expo 2020, why the sudden name change?
On Twitter some have questioned whether this signifies a scale back of the entire project.
Others are unsure what to think.
Of course some have welcomed the name change too.
But as for our sentiments, we're basically in agreement with this Tweeter.