Robert McFarlane isn't sure the boom in Dubai is going to last, but he's going to ride it out. "It's a great lifestyle," he said of living in this sun-drenched desert emirate. But to McFarlane, who supplies grass turf to many of the largest landscaping projects here, this is an artificial oasis a mile wide and an inch deep.

"There's nothing natural here," he said, surveying a lawn he recently installed. If the economic conditions change, he said, "this would all turn to dust."

Everywhere in the world, money talks, but in Dubai its din is especially loud. Even as unrest engulfs Iraq, the lure of cash-fueled opportunity draws millions of foreigners to work and vacation.

That attraction is Dubai's lifeline. One of the seven city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is almost entirely a product of foreign labor. An estimated 80 percent of the population of 1 million are foreign nationals. Dubai attracts so many laborers from abroad that the population has nearly 50 percent more men than women, one of the most skewed ratios in the world.

Dubai's ruling family, led by Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is intent on making Dubai the region's business and pleasure capital. Five-star hotels and office towers are rising out of the desert at a dizzying pace, and ever larger and more lavish developments continually spring from the drawing boards.

"It's manic," said Richard Warburton, the country manager of EC Harris, a construction consultancy, about the growth of the market. "I've personally never experienced anything like this before."

Changes proposed in the law in 2002 to give foreigners the right to purchase property have attracted even more outsiders to consider putting down roots here.

Still, many of those attracted to the region do not trust the rampant growth. Fear of the devastating economic effects of a terror attack is one reason. Another is the odd nature of the boom itself - most of the construction investment comes from two companies, both of which are controlled either directly or indirectly by the ruling family.

A third reason is the lack of legal safeguards for the status of foreigners. Laws only grudgingly grant rights to those without citizenship, and any that are granted remain subject to the whims of the ruling family. Even buying property does not currently grant permanent resident status.

"There are no consistent laws to follow," said Andrew Small, a South African who moved to Dubai a little more than four years ago, over a beer with a business colleague at a faux-Irish pub.

Although he sees himself staying for at least another 10 years, he can't get himself to purchase property. "I'd rather buy somewhere I have political confidence," he said.

For Dubai, however, easy cash has purchased a lot of economic confidence. Twenty years ago, Dubai was little more than a hot strip of sand along the Gulf coast.

Oil changed that. Manpower from overseas, mostly from India and Pakistan, streamed in to construct the buildings and staff the hotels. Now, with oil resources waning, Dubai has undertaken a bold effort to broaden its economy.

Its central location between Europe and Asia has helped make tourism and trade pillars of the economy. Indians and Pakistanis make up about half of the population.

Western expats make up only a few percent of the population, but their numbers have been growing quickly in recent years. The estimated number of citizens from Britain, of which Dubai was once a protectorate, has more than doubled in the last five years, to 100,000.

The number of citizens from countries without historical ties to the region is growing as well. The number of South Africans has risen 50 percent in five years, to 10,000. The government is trying to reduce the economy's dependence on foreigners, but despite recent efforts, natives of the Emirates are found overwhelmingly in cushy government jobs, if they work at all.

So far, easy oil cash has financed a stability that has rebounded quickly from shocks like the attacks of Sept. 11 and the war in Iraq.

Even the temporary closure of the U.S. Embassy in March due to security concerns in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has not had a lasting impact. In fact, for a country built on trade, war means business. The opening of Iraqi ports has led to a shipping boom that, to a large extent, funnels through Dubai.

Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate company, recently named Dubai as one of the top three "rising urban stars" in the world, together with Las Vegas and Shanghai, in an assessment that took into account a variety of factors including population and construction growth.

These kinds of assessments have helped keep overseas interest high, said Saeed Chinoy, managing director of Dubai Shows Ltd., which hosts property fairs to introduce real estate investments to foreigners. "We're selling the dream," he said.

Recently, though, the target market of that dream has become increasingly local. Arab investments are withdrawing from the United States and moving to Europe and the Middle East, Chinoy said. American companies, which used to come to market American real estate, have all but disappeared.

Chinoy reported that trade show attendance is growing for now, but he is worried about the way the Saudi Arabian economy collapsed once Westerners no longer felt welcome.

"What if Europeans and Americans were advised not to come to Dubai?" Chinoy asked. "It would be brutal."