Friday, December 04, 2009 DUBAI: Next month's opening of the Burj Dubai tower, the world's tallest building, will bring Dubai's era of exuberant expansion to a juddering halt as hundreds of other building projects are already mothballed.Plunging property prices and weak demand had already put a dampener on new schemes even before last week's shock announcement by state-owned giant Dubai World that it wants to halt debt payments for six months."It's not exactly going to improve investor confidence," said Matthew Green, associate director at property agency CB Richard Ellis, which has reported a 55 percent year-on-year drop in downtown Dubai commercial rental rates and a 67 percent fall outside the centre.The 800-metre (2,700 foot) tall skyscraper is the centrepiece of a 20 billion dollar new shopping district, Downtown Burj Dubai, which also includes 30,000 apartments and the Dubai Mall, which claims its space for 1,200 shops makes it the world's bigges...
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