BORMANN: It springs from the Arabian desert in a gush of glass, concrete and steel. The sheikhdom that’s become a city state. Founded on oil, Dubai is now pitching its future as a Singapore with sand, the new business capital of the Middle East.

This is also a playground for the fabulously wealthy. Most of what glitters here actually is gold. This is also a place where ostentatious takes on new meaning. Where urban design has no real pattern and where anything remotely ordinary just doesn’t belong.

ROBERT LEE: ‘I think the bigger things have been done before, but unique and iconic, Dubai’s the place right now’.

BORMANN: Not far from the site of the world’s largest skyscraper and just beyond the world’s tallest hotel is a development of breathtaking magnitude. It’s the world’s largest man-made island. The Palm is growing each day, complete with a trunk and seventeen arching fronds, life is imitating the art of the promo tape.

PROMO TAPE: ‘The eighth wonder of the world speeds ahead, responding to demand from the unique vision to reality’.

BORMANN: As if there’s not enough sand in the desert, the developers are dredging up more from beneath the sea for what will be a complete city with hotels, theme parks and shopping malls.

ROBERT LEE: ‘It’s definitely much bigger in terms of scope. We have a lot more zeros at the end of each feasibility’.

BORMANN: Robert Lee is not just counting the zeros on this one, two more much bigger Palm projects are about to surface, extending Dubai’s coastline by one hundred and twenty kilometres but his collection of tree cities is small timber stacked up against the biggest project of all. This is not it. It’s just the sales centre but inside I’ll meet a man who’ll promise me the world.

‘Hello, Trevor Bormann’.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: ‘Hey Trevor welcome to Dubai and welcome to … how are you?

BORMANN: ‘Thank you. It’s good to be here’.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: Trevor, say now you’re interested in actually buying your own island, this is the best development I could offer you. Why? If you look right here, it’s a series of three hundred man-made islands. Three hundred man-made islands that take the shape of the earth or the world’.

BORMANN: This brand new world will cost the developers about four billion dollars to raise from the ocean. Then individual buyers will have the chance to buy a country to indulge in their own megalomaniac fantasies.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: ‘Tasmania, that’s north and south islands of New Zealand. That’s Queensland, Western Australia. That should be right in the middle of the Simpson Desert maybe. Adelaide, Victoria and that should be, help me here’.

BORMANN: ‘Northern Territory’.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: ‘Northern Territory, exactly’.

BORMANN: There are no firm rules for conversion to nationhood although the world’s creators would prefer if development was in keeping with the nation’s character.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: ‘For example you take an Australian island and you build me a copy of the Sydney Bridge, we would love the idea because that number one adds value and number two is a destination itself and you’re building it in Australia where it’s supposed to be’.

BORMANN: Jules Verne wrote about travelling the world in eighty days. I’m going to make the trip in about eight minutes. The World will span about nine kilometres from north to south and be about seven kilometres wide. From the air, North America is kind of taking shape but in this World there won't be a place called Israel but then there’s no Palestine either. It was the big geopolitical issues I would take to the World’s maker.

‘I notice you’ve reunified Ireland. That’s quite an achievement. How do you think Northern Ireland Protestants would feel about that?’

ROBERT LEE: ‘I think it’s the same land. I come from Korea, there’s North Korea and South Korea, it’s shown as one peninsula and in terms of geography it’s the correct one and as a Korean I have no problem with that’.

BORMANN: The creation of the World is happening around the clock and there’s no rest on the seventh day. No miracles here either. Just an army of thousands of labourers most of them from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The flipside of Dubai’s economic success story is that it’s been achieved by outsiders. Only a quarter of the people who live here are actually citizens. Most of the workers building this brave new World are from the third world, lured by good wages with no income tax.

ABDULLA ABULHOU: ‘They take the risk to leave their country to live sometimes not in proper conditions’.

BORMANN: Abdulla Abulhou is a businessman from the old world who knows the industrial landscape well. In Dubai, foreign workers are barred from joining unions and while they’re not exactly slaves, the guest workers have few rights.

ABDULLA ABULHOU: ‘And some companies might you know for financial reason, might put them in a miserable life or miserable conditions. When you go to the States, I see the Mexican labour in the States. They are living also a very miserable there. This is the problem all around the world’.

BORMANN: Dubai’s new world will not be a place for have nots but they won't be left off the map entirely.

‘Well in our current world we have a developing world, will you be developing a developing world in your new world?’

ROBERT LEE: ‘No our job as the master developer is to provide the world islands for other developers come and share our vision and make Dubai a bigger and better place to come’.

BORMANN: ‘But what’s this though? That doesn’t seem to be part of Australia’.

HAMZA MUSTAFA: ‘No this is one of the celebrity islands now and with the purchase of the island, the island will actually be called after the name of the celebrity. Greg Norman for example, Norman’s Island or the Shark Island or you know something with that structure’.

BORMANN: The promoters have no shame that this could well eclipse every other Dubai development for garishness.

PROMOTIONS WOMAN: Here we’re not selling apartments, we’re not selling villas. We’re selling islands.

BORMANN: It’s all about freedom of expression we’re told, a nice way of saying there are no planning restrictions here. That could be a good thing. Imagine central Australia with sand but lots of shady trees as well. But as I soon found out, you don’t talk to these guys about money unless you’re seriously in the market.

‘A place the size of Australia for example, what would that set you back?’

ROBERT LEE: ‘The entire Australia-Asia I think is in the tune of one billion Dirhams.

PR WOMAN: ‘I am sorry you can’t say that’.

ROBERT LEE: ‘OK’.

BORMANN: The woman calling the shots from the sidelines seems to be the real ruler of the World. She’s from another planet the world of public relations.

‘But Mr Lee’s telling me this and he’s the boss’.

PR WOMAN: ‘I’m sorry I’m interrupting…’.

BORMANN: If I was a serious buyer with a lazy few hundred million, no doubt I would have got a straight answer. These World maker’s value business discretion and they also closely guard the names of the rich and famous who’ve bought into the project. I’m told though if I sail the waters between these continents in a few years from now, I might ask nation builders David Beckham or Rod Stewart or even a Great White Shark. It’s a small world after all.