Dubai to clone French city

Lyon (the real one) via iStockphoto.com

Trying to plan a trip to Lyon, France, but all the hotels are booked? You’ll soon have an alternative. Dubai has signed a deal with Lyon to build a clone of the French city renowned as a gastronomy capital and the place where cinema was born.

The Lyon replica, dubbed “Lyon-Dubai City,” will feature cafes, squares, museums, and restaurants, all built on a patch of land about the size of Paris’s Latin Quarter. The Lyon clone is the brainchild of a Dubai businessman who was inspired to “re-create Lyon’s soul” while planning a French-language university in Dubai, with the University of Lyon as partner.

This is hardly the first time a piece of Europe has been cloned. In the United States, there’s Paris Las Vegas, there’s a one-third replica of the Eiffel Tower at the Kings Island theme park, and of course Disney’s Epcot has its “World Showcases.” In China, the Eiffel Tower has again been re-created, and entire real estate developments there copy European villas, including “Venice Aquatic City,” complete with canals and gondolas.

As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.