Hong Kong consultants for $2 billion City of Arabia

The project was formally launched this week in Dubai with a glittering lunch and gala lunch featuring a life-size animatronic dinosaur from London's natural history museum. This animal will be one of 35 life-size dinosaurs to roam the project's prehistoric world which will be brought to life with digital sound and images.

Palmer and Turner will also oversee construction of the Mall of Arabia, which will be the largest shopping mall in the world when it opens in 2008. This four-level mall will have more than 1,000 retail outlets, a 15-screen cinema, parking for 10,000 cars and will be linked to the dinosaur attraction.

A more down-to-earth feature of this amazing project will be 34 tower blocks from 30 to 60 storeys high, and a complex of five-storey apartments fronting on to a four kilometer long artificial canal. There will also be a monorail linking all the parts of the City of Arabia and three hotels.

Local investors have been quick to snap up these tower plots, and off-plan sales of apartments to freehold buyers will follow. Indeed, the financing of the project is partly from the land development profit on these plots.

The architecture of the City Arabia is a mixture of contemporary Asian high-rise and an Arabian pastiche of pyramids and the ancient world. It will certainly be interesting to see how many more Hong Kong companies become involved in this huge project, but clearly the scope is considerable.