(CNN Spain) — The futuristic city of Doha, the capital of Qatar, is located on the shores of the Persian Gulf and stretches to the east of the desert peninsula, projecting the image of a forest of modern tall skyscrapers and cutting-edge technology. But it wasn’t always like this.

At the time of its independence, in 1971in Qatar nearly 120,000 people live, while today the number is nearly three million.

It was a very different Qatar, with small towns in the middle of the desert and a capital that was just starting to grow.

But thanks to oil and gas, the country began a real transformation in the second half of the 20th century that has been emphasized in recent decades.

This is how Qatar went from being a small and poor pearl producer to the energy powerhouse known for its futuristic capital.

Qatari population growth

in doha 1,186,023 people are currently livingthat is, roughly a third of the country’s total, remains as many as 2,985,029 people -most of the migrant workers—according to official statistics.

But if you count the surroundings, including the towns of Al Rayyan, Al Wakra, Al Daayen and Umm Slal, population of over 2.5 millionThat is, almost 85% of the total country is concentrated in this coastal area.

Qatar’s population growth has exploded in recent decades. Ten years ago the country’s population reached 1,836,676 people, instead of the current nearly three million. And in 2002, two decades ago, it happened only 640,872.

Whereas in 1971, at the time of its independence from Britain, there were only 120,000 people in Qatar.

The importance of oil and gas

At the beginning of the 20th century, Qatar was a poor area dedicated mainly to collecting and cultivating pearls, and trading them.

But Qatar’s first oil well They were discovered in 1939and its exploitation began in 1949.

In the following decades, especially from the 1950s and 1960s, the country began to grow rapidly thanks to this income, with the majority of its current wealth coming from the South Pars-North Dome Natural Gas Field, located on the Persian Gulf. and share with Iran.

Posters of Cameroonian goalkeeper Andre Onana decorate a building in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on August 16, 2022, ahead of the soccer World Cup. (Credit: MUSTAFA ABUMUNES/AFP via Getty Images)

After independence and nationalization In the 1970s, Qatar Petroleum was a state owned company today, Qatar’s per capita income being one of the highest in the world.

And today Qatar’s real GDP per capita is about $93,500, according to data from the World Bank. So, it will happen the sixth richest country in the worldbehind Liechtenstein, Monaco, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Doha, the city of the future

Qatar’s capital is the most prominent symbol of this exponential growth in wealth and population: in the heart of Doha skyscrapers tall, modern in design and equipped with high technology set the pace of the city.

Some of the world’s leading architects — such as Chinese-American Ieoh Ming Pei, who design The Museum of Islamic Art–was leased by a Qatari company in recent years to shape today’s Doha, which incorporates sustainability into its design.

The Msheireb property, for example, is behind the development of the new center Dohaa US$5.5 billion investment that seeks to reduce a city’s carbon footprint by minimizing the number of cars and using microclimate effects to keep the environment cool.

However, with an economy based on oil and gas extraction, Qatar still has a long way to go in terms of caring for the environment: the country hasna the largest per capita carbon footprint in the world.

Underground, in addition, the Doha metro circulates: continued driverless transport system which opened in 2019 but is still under construction as part of an ambitious regional project.

With information from Eoin McSweeney’s CNN