The Towering Dream of Dubai

At the heart of what Dubai and its globalization are creating, two cities overlap. One is a dystopic, even soulless vision of the future, where notions of civil society, individual rights and identity are subsumed in the logic of capital. The other is a rare triumph of the private sector in an Arab city that provides a model for prosperity and a force for integration, reversing decades of disappointment and defeat.

Sharaf, speeding past the World Trade Center, once the region's tallest building and now one among many, has his take.

"If it's good for business, it's good for Dubai," he said. "We've passed the beginning of it. Dubai is not to be an island, to be an oasis. The hope is that we propagate change for the good all around us."

'The Best of the World Here'

Sharaf, a tall, 39-year-old Emirati who was educated in Michigan and Colorado and worked in Houston with oil giant Conoco, pulled his car into a warren of cranes, past gaggles of workers in orange overalls and hard hats and half-completed construction that could serve as the emblem of today's Dubai. Before him was one of the most ambitious projects of his company, Tatweer.

"This whole area," he said, parting his hands across a window, "is all Healthcare City."

Healthcare City is one of the latest examples of what officials here call clustering: creating free-trade zones in the desert that, with marketing and infrastructure, attract cutting-edge companies and provide an engine for growth. There is Media City, Internet City, Knowledge Village and plans for Dubai Outsource Zone, Dubai Techno Park and Dubai Biotechnology and Research Park, among others. There are no taxes, no customs, no restrictions on transferring funds, little red tape -- in short, a capitalist free-for-all. The bustle and building around Internet and Media cities, with nearly no space left to rent, have transformed scrubland grazed by camels a decade ago into a city center awash in steel and glass.

Healthcare City is no less ambitious. By partnering with Harvard Medical School, the project hopes to create a global center for treatment, education and research. Tatweer is pouring $1.8 billion into the project, which will begin operating in 2009 and sprawl across 4.5 million square feet. The next phase will cover an area four times as big.

"People who needed treatment had to pick up and leave. They had to go to Europe, they had to go to the United States, they had to go to Asia," Sharaf said. "This really is making a statement that you no longer have to go. We have the best of the world here."

The Dubai model boils down to a self-consciously corporate approach to government: a can-do attitude that appeals to business, speed in decisions possible under an authoritarian system and achieving results that create momentum. The approach infuses the landscape. In a gesture at efficiency, government buildings bear the department's Internet addresses on their facades. Advertisements tantalize with a stilted lingo, a sort of Arabic newspeak. One company's ads read: "Responsibility is our motto," "Progress is our specialty," "Excellence is our goal." English translations followed. Even McDonald's has picked up the vocabulary. "High quality is our standard," one ad reads. ("I'm lovin' it," it says underneath.)

Over a lunch of Lebanese appetizers at a fashionable restaurant, Sharaf and his boss, Saeed al-Muntafiq, chief executive officer of Tatweer, traded aphorisms on the rise of the Dubai model. Dubai had little oil of its own (oil accounts for just 5 percent of Dubai's economy), so it was forced to diversify to prosper. To prosper, it needed skilled workers. To attract that talent, it had to ensure that it would be the most free-wheeling, hospitable and libertine of the traditional Gulf Arab states.

"Look around you in this restaurant," Sharaf said proudly. "Just take a look."

At the tables, none of them empty, were Emiratis in traditional dress, men in suits and women in skirts. Snippets of English and a plethora of Arabic dialects were audible. There were perhaps 30 nationalities seated here, he said.