The cracked-out development of Dubai feels too over-the-top to be real. I've heard that their rationale is to plan to be an economic centre when the oil runs out, but that's what's so ironic about it. When oil inevitably runs out and has to be imported at a high price how is running an indoor ski hill in a 50 degree climate going to be profitable? How will they pay to air condition enormous trade fair halls that nobody will ever use because it's a long flight from any major business city?
All the other cities that are mushrooming right now can at least be logically pieced together: Las Vegas is financed by millions of gamblers emptying their life savings on the Blackjack table, Shanghai is the leading eocnomic centre for a country of 1.3 billion that is growing by 10% a year. Dubai? It's some weird sheikdom the size of greater Ottawa in a forbidding desert. Certainly it would be a boom town, but not enough to justify having 15% of the world's heavy lift cranes operating in one city. What is going on there, and who is investing in all this madness?