Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City

In the space of barely a year, two serious studies of the phenomenon that is Dubai have emerged. Christopher Davidson’s Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success and now Jim Krane’s Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City.

This is testament to the profile the city state has come to occupy in the international imagination. Dubai is a poster boy for globalisation and the hub of an oil-rich region, viewed by some as pivotal to the recovery of the world’s economy.

That status, however, is now under threat. Krane’s book appears as Dubai is struggling financially with the fear that it has overreached itself – big time.