Jumeirah Beach

This guide to Jumeirah Beach in Dubai starts with the sail-shaped tower on the horizon and traces the coastline back to its unglamorous start as Chicago Beach, home to an oil-storage operation and a modest hotel where a shopkeeper named Reza recalled the dirt road he arrived on in 1971. It follows the story to one evening in 1993, when a British architect named Tom Wright sat in that same hotel, watched a dhow sail past the window, and reached for a napkin.