The Burj Khalifa, jutting 2,717 feet into Dubai’s glittering skyline, opened to the world on Jan. 4, 2010, marking an epic architectural feat. The planet's largest building (the equivalent of both World Trade Center towers stacked on top of each other) sits among a larger expanse, the Downtown Burj Dubai, which includes parks, residences, entertainment facilities, and a shopping center, the latest and most lavish of the city’s many projects designed to offset an economy largely dependent on limited gas and oil reserves.

But the ill-timed opening of the skyscraper came less than three months after Dubai World, the emirate's investment art, asked to delay payment on their $26 billion debt, causing a financial crisis in the area’s markets.

While Dubai struggles to remain afloat, two of its neighbors are at the forefront of a hurried race for cultural relevance in the region. Abu Dhabi, which is planning one of the most ambitious museum developments on the Saadiyat Islands, will boast a Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim museum set to be the largest in the world, the Louvre Abu Dhabi and a performing arts center designed by Zaha Hadid.

However, Qatar could very well be poised to be the major art hub in the Gulf. Merely a sleepy British protectorate until the 1970’s, when the world's third-largest gas deposits were discovered off its shores, the last two years have seen substantial developments in the city’s capital, Doha, many of which feature a cultural element.

In 2008, the acclaimed I.M. Peidesigned Museum of Islamic Art was inaugurated, playing host to the Qatar Tribeca Film Festival the following year. The first Middle Eastern branch of Sotheby's opened — which has a close relationship with the Qatar royal family, one of its biggest clients — and held it's first auction in late 2009. An abundance of new contemporary art galleries were welcomed in the revived Souq Waquif and a Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum is underway, set for completion in 2013.

So while the Burj Khalifa may serve as a monument to the cost of manufacturing culture (at least temporarily), Qatar, and its oil-rich counterparts, could avoid a similar fate by learning from their neighbor’s mistakes. If this happens, the region’s cultural legacy may last long after its natural resources dry up.