Dubai

Dubai cut a canal through the most expensive land it owns. 3.2 kilometres of water driven from Business Bay out to the Gulf — not reclaimed seabed, not empty desert, but the built-up middle of the city. Opened November 2016. It turned Downtown and Bur Dubai into an island. The waterfall under Sheikh Zayed Road switches itself off when a boat passes beneath. Most cities build around what is already there. This one moved the sea inland.

Dubai counts its population in real time. Nine government bodies — residency, transport, electricity, health, municipality, land, education, economy — now feed one live census system, updated continuously rather than every ten years. That's why the city can tell you its population to the individual person on a given afternoon. Most countries publish an estimate and wait a decade to correct it. Cities run on data. This one decided not to run on old data.

Dubai finished the world's first air taxi station before the taxis arrived. The vertiport sits near Dubai International, built by the transport authority with Skyports, designed to plug straight into the metro and bus network. Six locations are planned. Early fares were quoted from around AED 350 for a flight of roughly fifteen minutes. Aircraft are electric and, they say, far quieter than a helicopter. The hard part was never the aircraft. It was getting a city to build somewhere to land.

Dubai wants a quarter of all journeys driverless by 2030. Not a pilot. A stated target: 25 percent of every trip taken in the city, with no human at the controls. The metro already runs that way. Taxis are starting. Air taxis are next in the queue. A dedicated command centre is already wired into the city's traffic systems. Most cities are debating whether to allow this. This one has put a percentage on it.

17,000 piles are already in the ground. That is the current state of Al Maktoum International — plus 45 million cubic metres of earth moved and 10 million work hours committed in fifteen months. No terminal. No roof. No photographs worth publishing yet. AED 13 billion of contracts have been awarded this year, with AED 55 billion more due before December. The most expensive thing being built in this city today is still a hole in the desert.