u/Polyphagous_person

Most Redditors take a dim view of the Persian Gulf states, as they have severe human rights problems; and have a reputation for being decadently rich and vapid (as well as attracting similar rich vapid people from around the world). This post is not an attempt to glaze the Persian Gulf states, but as shown in the map above, they've developed big cities (e.g. Dubai, with a metropolitan population of 6.36 million or Doha with a metropolitan population of 1.19 million) - and due to these nations' overreliance on exporting fossil fuels, Redditors often deride them for having cities where there shouldn't be any.

Australian Redditors frequently complain that we failed to tax our resource wealth, and we could have been as wealthy as Norway or Qatar if we did. So if we did tax our resource wealth instead of letting it all slip into the hands of mining companies, would the cities of Pilbara (a resource-rich area with a hot arid climate and infertile soils) have reached a similar size of Doha, or possibly even Dubai (which means it would be bigger than either Melbourne or Sydney)? To put this into comparison, currently, the largest city in the Pilbara is only the 73rd largest in Australia, Karratha, with a population of 19,051.

Sure, Australia would be able to pay for more construction, desalinate more seawater, and import more workers if we harnessed our resource wealth better. But would it have led to cities comparable to Doha or Dubai in the Pilbara? If not, does the Pilbara have disadvantages that the infamously hot, infertile and arid Persian Gulf states don't?

On a more facetious note, Australia's vapid rich people tend to accumulate in the Gold Coast, so would harnessing our resource wealth and turning the Pilbara into big cities like those of the Persian Gulf have diverted the growth away from the Gold Coast?

The above image is from this research paper: Remote sensing of 50 years of coastal urbanization and environmental change in the Arabian Gulf: a systematic review