With Kylie Minogue, Charlize Theron, Shirley Bassey, Michael Jordan and Robert De Niro in attendance and a fireworks display literally visible from space, the $20 million opening party for the Atlantis Resort on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah islands last month seemed a fittingly extravagant farewell to Dubai’s construction adolescence. With the UAE’s supposedly impermeable economy feeling the strain together with the rest of the world, Dubai has been forced to redress construction behaviour.