Females all over the world were celebrating the announcement of Isla Moda last week - a whole new world of fashion (literally) being constructed off our city's shores by Dubai Infinity Holdings. Big Ben is almost finished - soon to tower over Sheikh Zayad Road, reminding us just how late for work we actually are. Pads in 'The Pad' are up for sale, in case you wanted a revolving apartment in a building set to look like an mp3 player. Do you see a pattern emerging here? It seems to us, that as soon as an impressive plan for an additional Dubai wonder is announced, someone tries to better it immediately. We're not sure this one can be topped, however.

Dubai-based developer Nakheel has this week announced plans for a massive real estate development, set to make all others pale in comparison. They might have created The World, but with all that money and enough creative genius to put any British Blue Peter team to shame, they clearly woke up one morning thinking "It's just not enough, we need to do better". And thus, they decided, "We shall create The Universe".

Yes, really. The Universe is set to be dredged up in quite a noisy, non-spiritual manner between Palm Jumeirah and Palm Deira, according to Gulf News. It won't quite spring up over night, though - for those who were suddenly planning their next birthday party on the moon, or wedding in the peaceful eastern quarter of Pluto. The multi-billion dollar project will take 15 to 20 years to develop, meaning The World around its crane-ridden crust would have long been finished by the time The Universe's residential, commercial and tourism projects are anything worthy of more than speculation.

The Universe will consist of 3,000 hectares of land, and news of its construction comes shortly after Nakheel announced plans to blow a whopping Dhs200 million on a development called the Blue Communities - a sustainability project, and 'a call to action' aimed at raising awareness of coastal development issues.

As one of the world's largest privately held property developers, we can hardly argue Nakheel's authority on the matter, especially when they're turning every stretch of otherwise untouchable ocean into something majestic that makes us all want to live in the middle of the water - even if we can't personally afford the yacht to get there. Their projects are said to be worth USD $60 billion and when finished, the waterfront developments in Dubai will add an extra 1,000km of shoreline to the city's already sprawling coastline. That's a whole lot of extra beach for you and I to play on, in the future.

Nakheel claim to have written the rulebook on Waterfront development. It's said that almost two thirds of the world's population live in coastal communities and Blue Communities will aspire to provide leadership in future developments. Let them, we say. If The Universe means that Dubai itself can put life on Mars, encourage a valentines date on Venus, host a sports day on Saturn and open a restaurant in Uranus, there's really no one better to show the rest of Earth how to create stuff that's out of this world.

Such changes happening so quickly, we're guessing might frighten some people. Where do you invest in a property when the city limits are expanding by the hour? Which car do you buy when you might well have to upgrade to a solar-powered space pod in three years time? Will buying an apartment in a building that looks like an iPod now, be the equivalent of living in a rather embarrassing, battery operated plastic cassette player when 2010 rolls around?

Who knows? These are things not even Nakheel can tell us. We've chosen to live in a city that constantly tries to outdo everyone else, so maybe we should just embrace it. Dubai is changing, whether we like it or not. Asking too many questions hurts our heads, and besides, even when we can't send a simple text message thanks to a satellite being clogged by sand and smog, at least we can look at the world's tallest building from the boundaries of the Earth's crust, while we're trying.

Posted: 21 Jan 2008