The Washington Post‘s Anthony Shadid has a fascinating article about Dubai, the strange vision of the future materializing on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

Using the clean slate of desert shores — and unconstrained by democracy or citizen participation — the Dubaians are pursuing a futuristic vision worthy of the movies.

For instance, construction is under way on Dubailand, a three billion square foot amusement park; that’s three times the size of Manhattan.  An indoor snow-skiing resort has opened.  It is all reminiscent of the city seen in A.I. — Artificial Intelligence.  (There are more precise parallels as well: Shadid reports that prostitution is fairly open in Dubai.  In a puritanical region, it is another distinction that can attract expatriates and tourists.)

Like any good futurist vision, Dubai is hardly utopian:

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.

(The potential role as a model also makes it politically interesting.)

Dubai is trying to become a global center for many kinds of economic activity:

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.

That could make it the kind of place to pursue many activities frowned on elsewhere, from infotech hacking to human cloning.