Abu Dhabi's towering achievement

The building leans westward at 18 degrees, more than five times the angle of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The top 17 floors, out of a total of 35, hang over the edge, putting thousands of tonnes of pressure on the core of the building.

Contractors and engineers devised a series of solutions to this problem, some of which have never been seen in the world of tower construction. In fact, this unique challenge is the reason that National Geographic is featuring the building along with Sheikh Zayed Mosque and the circular Aldar headquarters building as the “making of three modern day wonders” starting on Saturday.

To understand the epic engineering challenges of building the leaning Capital Gate tower in Abu Dhabi, you must first realise that nature wants it to collapse.

“Everything about the tower makes it want to fall over,” says Michael Johnson, who has been appointed to oversee the final phase of construction of the building by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (ADNEC). “But it has been designed to stop.”

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Dubai and Abu Dhabi now more affordable for expats

The declining rents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have made the cities relatively affordable ones for expatriates compared to others around the globe, the latest Mercer Cost of Living Survey has found.

While Dubai ranks 55 on the list of most expensive cities, Abu Dhabi is only slightly more expensive with a rank of 50, which it shares with Frankfurt in Germany, the survey said.

It also threw up a few surprises: displacing Tokyo from its traditional spot at the top of the list, Luanda, Angola's capital, has emerged as the world's most expensive city for expatriates. Tokyo came in second, while, in another surprise, another African city completed the top three – Chad's capital ?Ndjamena. Moscow was in fourth position followed by Geneva in fifth.

The rear was brought up by Karachi, which the survey found to be the least expensive city for expatriates to live in.

The Mercer survey covered 214 cities across five continents and measured the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

"While across the UAE, the cost of living has remained relatively stable, we are seeing that accommodation costs have continued to decrease in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, driving down the overall cost of living for expats," said Dr Markus Wiesner, who heads Mercer's Dubai office.

He said Mercer increased the number of cities surveyed this year from 143 to 214, which means that the cities cannot be compared with their previous rankings.

For the first time, the ranking of the world's top 10 most expensive cities includes three African urban centres: apart from Luanda and Ndjamena, Libreville in Gabon comes in at seventh place.

The top 10 also includes three Asian cities: besides Tokyo in second place, Osaka at six and Hong Kong jointly ranked eighth. Moscow, Geneva and Zurich, which shares the eighth spot with Hong Kong, are the most expensive European cities, followed by Copenhagen at 10.

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