Dubai 'Raining Street’ with year-round rainfall

Dubai is well known for its sun, sand and sea that has attracted holidaymakers – and long-term residents – for many years. But now it is hoping to make a splash with the unlikely concept of year-round rainfall. Kleindienst Group, which is developing The World Islands off the coast of Dubai, announced the start of a 1-kilometre "Raining Street" at its Heart of Europe project. It says temperatures, which rise above 40°C in the summer across the UAE, will be kept to 27°C, allowing visitors to remain comfortable while outdoors. “With the temperature ranging between 40 to 50 degrees Celsius during summer, people are not going to walk outside. Therefore, we need a technology to create an outdoor climate-controlled area," said Josef Kleindienst, chairman of Kleindienst Group. The rendering supplied by the company shows visitors carrying umbrellas to stay dry as they gather in the boulevard in scenes more akin to Glasgow than the Middle East. The intensity of the rain will be adjustable with a "downpour, a breeze or moderate rainfall depending on the weather". In the summer season "you could expect a heavy rainfall". The company said it based the idea on a concept by Camillo Sitte, an Austrian architect, who proposed to build cities where everything was within walking distance. The technology ensures that as soon as the temperature goes above 27 degrees Celsius on the island, cold water in the form of rain will fall from top of the buildings through concealed pipes.