The Dubai Internet City is a tantalizing glimpse into the future. Malta’s future.

Very tasteful architecture with plazas, arches and fountains lead to plate glass offices, mostly highrise, some skyscrapers. They are set around lakes with more fountains, greenery and small bridges crisscrossing the lakes.

This is what you get from the offices, a peaceful ambience conducive to thought, conversation and interaction.

And it is all man-made: six, seven years ago this was all desert. Since then it has been gouged out, the buildings constructed and tenants moved in. Sitting in a DIC office today it is hard to imagine so much could be done in so few years.

Is this the future of Ricasoli?

If only it were. It would mean that what is today a neglected and derelict corner of Malta could become, with Tecom’s insistence on excellence and on attention to detail, not just a showcase but also a jewel to be proud of.

It was easy to see, yesterday, that the reality of the DIC, and the Dubai Media City which we visited later, and as a whole the reality of today’s Dubai, has filled the prime minister’s imagination with a vision which no doubt we will be hearing about again and again over the coming months as it increasingly looks like it will be the dominant theme in this government’s election plank: Malta as the Dubai in the Mediterranean.

But, apart from the lakes in the desert, the peaceful, rural, pastoral surroundings of people working on the latest technology, will it be that easy to replicate what has been the success of Dubai and its satellite cities such as DIC, DMC and the like, in Malta?

SmartCity Malta will be the first, or the second if one considers Kerala in India, attempt by Dubai Holdings to create sorts of replicas of DIC around the world.

There are certain issues which will constitute a learning curve not just for the Maltese side but also for the Dubai side.

Coming to Malta, the DIC people will have come to a country without the cover DIC has in Dubai of its close relations to the government. Dubai Holdings have dealings in private property around the world, true, but in this venture they will face not just our political system but also, for good or bad alike, our way of doing things.

Secondly, this is a comment one can make about Dubai as a whole: the whole city is one huge building site, attractive yes but with skyscrapers still under construction wherever one looks. Even DIC, whereas DMC is almost all built up, is still somewhat under construction. The hotel we were in is so modern it only opened three weeks ago and taxi drivers do not even know about it. Yet, just like what will happen at Ricasoli, the hotel is right in the middle of SmartCity, and for all that was said this is all property speculation, it makes sense, it makes a lot of sense especially given the huge time one takes to go anywhere in Dubai.

SmartCity in Dubai has indeed succeeded in attracting big and small names. All around, one can see the big names on big buildings – such as CNN, the big names in internet and also in computers and IT in general. The question is whether these big names came to Dubai because they were attracted by the geographic location of the place, so near to India whence come so many of the workers one sees around, and computer geeks as well, or because they were attracted by the critical mass they found in Smart City. If the big companies came to Dubai because they were attracted by a unique location in the middle of nowhere where it is the only decent place around, they may still be attracted to Malta but Malta, though an island in the middle of the sea, cannot be compared to Dubai in the middle of the desert.

Talking about the workers in Dubai, a third consideration, the whole Dubai economy is based on a huge substratum of workers imported from everywhere and paid $4 a day, whereas any business plan one makes for Malta cannot take that as an assumption.

On the other hand, to counter this argument, one notices, for instance, that there are next to no software developers in SmartCity whereas in Malta we already have some very good ones. So there is a case for attracting to Malta the big and not so big names in IT because we have other things to offer than just a building and a location.

There is always, in such a huge venture, a big question mark: will what is being planned actually come through?

I suggest, however, that there is far more, far more to SmartCity than all the postcard views, smart location, big names on the boards.

There is one very important contribution that even now SmartCity is making on our leaders, or at least, should be making.

Let me explain. It is indeed a pity the media on such trips are allowed in for the initial two minutes and then kicked out.

Yesterday, for instance, the prime minister and his team were shown what looked like a hugely interesting presentation when they visited DIC: Considerations on strategies regarding emerging markets.

It wasn’t as if they were talking about state jewels.

Yet what the presentation was on about was about what were called the three horizons:

· Do what you are doing excellently;

· Build enabling infrastructures around it;

· Then target emerging markets.

This is an extremely good template for the future of Malta. When SmartCity begins to be built we will all be struck by the extreme attention to detail and planning. There will be none of our usual way of doing things, even if we have hugely improved these past years. The first lesson to be learnt will thus be to do things even better than we are doing them today, from roadbuilding to construction, to name but two.

Secondly, we must be strategic in our thinking. This is what to build enabling infrastructures means. Starting from today’s reality we must build those infrastructures which will enable us to go higher. One such decision was the late 1980s decision to upgrade all our communication infrastructure: where would we be today if we did not do that then?

The third target is perhaps the harder: we cannot remain locked into our own insularity. We must search for new emerging markets where our excellence can make the difference. Even here, unfortunately, we have lost most of the goodwill of the Arab world, which fortunately this SmartCity venture is redressing.

But perhaps the main lesson was a comment made by the officer who was beginning to give a presentation at DMC before we were ushered out: There are no ceilings for us. Attitude is all. We have changed our traditional way: we have turned sand into Dubai City.

In the late 1960s most of the media were in London and Cyprus. Then they were attracted by Lebanon. When civil war broke out in 1974, they fled back to London and Cyprus. That is what provided Dubai with its lucky break. It is easy to see that had we had the three horizons in place, we could have attracted some of that business.

As we were going out of DMC a young man came to meet Dr Gonzi. That young man has a history. Before 1996 he was employed at MDC in Peking where he must have been one of the very few Maltese to learn Chinese. In 1996, following the change in government, he was brought back to Malta and set to work at MDC. He lasted for only two months. Since then, he has been making a success of himself at Dubai.

The real question to ask now is whether things like this will continue to take place anytime we have a change in government. We just cannot lose half of our workforce because of what we call politics but isn’t. It would be a pity, a great pity, that a dream such as SmartCity or any other similar dream were to founder because of similar stupidity. We and only we can make our dreams come true, if we dream big enough and if we carry on with our dream. But equally we and only we can make our dreams disappear into thin air.