What is a mayor to do when his city simply runs out of space? His buildings press up against the coast and there’s no more land to build on. The faint-hearted would stop and call it a day, but the truly brazen mayor fills in the sea and extends his city onward.  It’s a remarkable feat, leveling out the land and widening your coast, and certainly not something that is usually feasible in the real world. And yet, on the edge of the Persian Gulf, a wealthy city financed by even wealthier princes is doing just that.

Welcome to Dubai – largest city of the United Arab Emirates and a veritable Sim City in progress. With oil money filling the city’s coffers like a wicked cheat code, Dubai is expanding outwards and upwards at an incredible rate. The outward growth is especially overwhelming. They’ve constructed several sets of artificial islands off the coast, and plans for many more are in the works. From satellite photos, you can see how impressive these structures are: one set in the shape of a palm tree, another archipelago shaped to look like a map of the world, and all covered in luxury homes and hotels. There are even plans for another grouping of islands larger than the entire city of Philadelphia. These are no little sandbars.

Sometimes, though, building outwards is no longer a feasible alternative and you are forced to look upwards. Even Dubai, with its widening limits, knows that land is precious in a large city and has embarked on a massive construction campaign. Bared concrete and steel are dominant in Dubai’s rising skyline as new buildings constantly grow. Construction experts have surmised that 15 to 20 percent of the world’s cranes are in Dubai. And you thought that Penn was always under construction? But with that extra element of excessiveness that pervades construction in Dubai, these buildings are of course aiming to be as impressive as possible.

Today, the tallest skyscraper in the US is the Sears Tower in Chicago at 1,451 feet tall. The tallest building in the world is Taipei 101 in Taiwan, clocking in at 1,671 feet. There are even a few structures that reach higher: The CN Tower in Toronto is 1,815 feet tall and a radio tower in North Dakota even gets up to 2,063 feet (but that mast is guyed with cables so that doesn’t really count). To think that a skyscraper – a building that people will actually work in – could go even higher is practically absurd. That is, unless you’re playing Sim City.

Above the streets of Dubai and the waters of the Gulf, a new tower is rising that will eclipse any and every manmade structure on the planet. The Burj Dubai will top out at about 2,651 feet – we think. The actual planned height is a closely-guarded secret, so no other construction crew can try to beat it. Some rumors even suggest that the Burj could reach over 3000 feet tall. Say it again – three thousand. Still can’t wrap your mind around it? Go to your window and look at Center City. Now take the Comcast Center and put another one on top of it. And then another.

Some look at this uninhibited growth in utter awe of the incredible efforts occurring there. But the question always remains: even if it’s possible to build a huge city, can you build influence and prestige? Is Dubai’s size and wealth enough to make a top-tier world city, or will it never gain the same historical and cultural capital that the other great cities of the world have? Becoming an important city and not just a very large one is something that Sim City simply can’t teach you. Luckily though, instead of waiting for its time in the sun, Dubai has taken matters into its own hands. The International Cricket Council, a hundred-year-old sporting organization formed when the British Empire still ruled the seas and the Queen was honored everywhere from Australia to Zimbabwe, has recently relocated to Dubai. Despite this occurring mainly for tax reasons, it still brings an additional level of international credibility to the city.

Again looking globally, Emirates Airline, the national airline of the UAE based out of Dubai International Airport, is working towards becoming the world’s premier luxury airline, the title currently claimed by Singapore Airlines. Emirates has even purchased several of the still-coming Airbus A380 aircraft, with a minimum capacity of 550 passengers, which certainly would propel the company to the forefront of the international market. Again, as with everything else in the city, Dubai is aiming to hurl itself into the international spotlight.

Dubai is quite a bit like Singapore in other ways, especially the government’s civil controls: the Sheik of Dubai has ultimate control, education and speech are closely checked, and labor unions are forbidden. But even with the governmental similarities, the business model is much different. Singapore is the epitome of a planned economy, with government economists managing things to keep the economy growing. Dubai, on the other hand, throws its businesses more to the open market, encouraging growth through low-tax zones and the like. The result is the same, however, in both -- a very wealthy and powerful city, despite its small size, in which a somewhat restrictive government stays in power by maintaining a prosperous economy.

Will Dubai actually become the Singapore of the Middle East, a city on par with the greatest in both the West and the East? Well, we can never tell for sure, but it seems very, very likely. When that kind of wealth gets concentrated in a single area, and when smart, brave-thinking planners have control of the reigns, you can’t help but expand like something from Sim City. With the rate at which Dubai is growing, only some unforeseen catastrophe could stop its growth, and I’m sure its scientists are already working on a way to turn off Disasters in the real world.