Dubai: The Las Vegas of the Middle East?

An excellent article on Slate by Seth Stevenson on Dubai that talks about skiing and Cyclone. For an outsider writing about Dubai, he couldn't be more accurate.

Some excerpts:

With not much indigenous culture to promote, it would take some modern sort of attraction to bring in foreign visitors. But how on earth do you lure rich tourists to a desert in the middle of nowhere? It seems like an impossible problem … until you remember that someone's already solved it. Viva Las Vegas!...

...This is the brand identity Dubai is cribbing from. The announcement of each new fantastical project (man-made islands in the shapes of continents; the tallest tower in the world; a theme park where the theme is to aggregate theme parks) keeps Dubai in the news. And it all sounds so very strange that we simply must see it for ourselves. Hey, that's what brought me here.

Read the whole article here.