Offers an understanding of Dubai urbanism by demonstrating that cumulative programmatic intensification and scalar amplification of its large-scale infrastructural components guided its metropolitan growth and generated a territorial organization logic that outstripped the predictive capacity of traditional Western master planning. 'A landmark study of one of the world's major port cities and centers of global finance. Combines wonderful historical depth with original analysis and a remarkable summing up of the major lessons to be learned from the hectic story of Dubai's explosive growth. Destined to become a standard work of reference and an inspiration for further research.' Roger Owen, Harvard University, USA 'The book challenges preconceptions about Dubai's development in at least two major ways. It reveals how the real estate ventures of local and international speculators have been guided and supported by major investment on the part of the government in infrastructure. It also shows that underlying the sensationalism of the new is a long history of thinking, strategizing, planning, and of trying and erring. Ramos makes a major contribution to the study of urban development in Dubai and the Gulf region and to the formulation of the new relationship between urbanization and transportation infrastructure in the late 20th and early 21st century.' Hashim Sarkis, Harvard University, USA '... the book presents a thorough account of the development of Dubai from a business and engineering standpoint... useful to academics, planning practitioners, and policy-makers interested in contemporary moments of urbanism and may help inform the discourse of burgeoning port (re)developments in China and other key global trade nodes.' Geographical Research '... probably the best book one may read on the city-state'The Middle East Journal