In the 1989 film Field of Dreams Ray Kinsella an Iowa corn farmer, hearing voices, interprets them as a command to build a baseball diamond in his fields; he does, and the Chicago Black Sox come. This brought the saying “built it and they will come” to attention. It appears that Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum the Emir of Dubai must have seen this film as he appears to be following its script in the building up of his country.

It may seem strange in these times of economic difficulties that there is one part of the world where everything is booming and there appears to be unlimited capital and opportunity for new developments to take place. No, I am not talking about China. I’m talking about the United Arab Emirates and in particular Dubai. In Dubai they are building the world’s tallest building Burj Dubai that is due for completion in 2009 with an expected height in excess of 2000 ft. Dubai is seen of the shopping center of the Middle East and its Mall of the Emirates is the largest mall outside of the USA. In October the Dubai Mall with more than 1,200 retail outlets will dwarf this mall and all other malls in the world. Emirates the airline of Dubai also seems to be bucking the trend for airlines to fail and it has just started flying the Airbus 380 super jumbo. It has 58 of these huge planes on order, and in addition has recently ordered more than 100 wide-bodied planes from both Airbus and Boeing. The airport in Dubai is already one of the world’s most advanced airports but a new airport, Dubai World Central is under development. This new airport that has an area greater than that of Hong Kong Island is will start to come into use within the next year.  Further to that Dubai also has Jebel Ali Port, the world’s largest deep-water port that is a very important trade hub for this part of the world. Also under development is Dubailand, and this will be the world’s largest theme park being more than twice the size of Disney World. There are also a huge number of high-priced hotels including the amazing 7-Star Burj Al Arab, probably the world’s most expensive hotel. Dubai plans to become of the world’s vacation centers.

Dubai is perhaps an even greater building site that either Beijing or Shanghai in China with it is claimed more cranes per sq ft than anywhere else in the world. The whole country appears to be a vast building site with high-rise apartments and offices appearing everywhere replacing the desert sands.