Madinat Jumeirah

This guide to Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai starts with the shift you feel stepping off the road into its network of hand-dug canals and wind-tower silhouettes, then goes back to 2004, when a design team spent years studying Omani, Yemeni, Bahraini and old Dubai building traditions to construct an entire Arabian town from scratch. It stops on a scholar's verdict that the result was merely cosmetic, and on the abra boats that still glide the canals with no fixed timetable.