Yet another new city in Dubai

"twice the size of Hong Kong Island with housing for 1.5 million people."

We've all been witness to the exploding nature of development in Dubai, but one project is taking the scale of building to another level altogether. On the emirate's last remaining few kilometres of undeveloped coastline an entire city is rising from the ground.

At the moment, Dubai Waterfront is nothing more than endless miles of deserted beachfront dotted with a few lone cranes. But wait ten years and this patch of sand will be transformed into a living, breathing city twice the size of Hong Kong Island with housing for 1.5 million people.

There is some  preposterous about the ambition but then you go see it and they are actually doing it. What Americans may not understand is that there is a vast world — hundreds of millions of middle-class people — for whom Dubai is nearby, Moslem, relatively honest and even progressive by the standards of that part of the world. So yes, it's not such a bizarre idea that a city-sate with a native population of 250,000 — think Tacoma or Ica, Peru before its emergency — could build a city for another 1.5 million people. What I don't quite yet get is whether the expectation is that these new residents will be part-timer residents simply looking for a safe haven (though I can't quite see how the Gulf is all that safe in global terms) or will be full-time. If the latter, doesn't that present a long-term threat to the hegemony of native Dubaians, much more so the Emir?