The world’s fair in Dubai, a tech-saturated site teeming with talking robots and solar canopies, sought to be the future.

Now, it’s history.

The pandemic-delayed Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates closes on Thursday after eight years of anticipation, over $7 billion in investment, 240 million hours of labor, and six months of festivities.

The fate of the fairgrounds is clear. Some national pavilions will be demolished. A few will remain, like an enormous lacework dome and the UAE’s soaring falcon-shaped pavilion. Other buildings will be rebranded for a new business district soon to rise from the site.

But the deeper legacy of the event proves more elusive.

When Dubai won the bid to host Expo in 2013, it felt like a rebirth. Just four years earlier, the glitzy city-state suffered a real-estate crash in the Great Recession, rescued by a $20 billion bailout from oil-rich Abu Dhabi.