Sand and Freedom

Sand and Freedom
Greenland has a luxurious air-conditioned villa with an infinity pool - not that anyone lives in it yet.

This isn't the real world, of course: it is The World, situated a couple of miles off the coast of Dubai, just next door to The Palm, a giant artificial island shaped like a stylised date palm, which gained national attention a couple of years ago when David Beckham and other England footballers bought luxury properties on its fronds.

The World takes the whole concept one step further, laying some 300 new islands in a blurry Mercator projection.

Both developments are run by the state-owned Nakheel company.

As their sales literature puts it, "The Palm put Dubai on the map, The World is putting the map on Dubai."

It isn't a literal map of the world.

Channels have been carved between land masses such as "France" and "Spain", so as to create attractively saleable individual plots.

Britain will set you back about US$32m, but it has apparently been sold (to an undisclosed buyer).

Already, The World is undergoing its own tectonic shifts.

A private consortium has purchased the whole of Australasia, for example, with a view to turning it into a holiday resort.

They have plans to alter its shape entirely, join it all up with bridges, and build a 12-storey hotel on the south island of New Zealand.