Phil Gordon, the mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, can remember vividly his arrival in the Arizona town in 1960.
At the time, if new arrivals gazed down the length of the city's six-lane roads, past the sun-baked parking lots and cranes hovering above the concrete skeletons of building constructions, they would see the Superstition Mountains and, nestling below, the valley farms and sparse palm trees scattered across the arid desert.
Back then, the air was thick with aspirations; those were the boom years for Phoenix. Now, a half-century later, Mr Gordon hopes, with a little help from Dubai, to breathe new life into the Arizona metropolis, which has suffered badly in the global financial crisis.
The mayor, known for his "go-go" way of doing business, has just a year of his term in office left in which to push through goals to boost business co-operation between the UAE and the state capital as well as make Phoenix the first carbon-neutral city in the US.
"He's trying very hard" said Mohammed Alabbar, the chairman of the Dubai developer Emaar and a friend of Mr Gordon's. "He's hands-on. He lives his job 24 hours a day."
Still, critics have questioned the wisdom of hitching Phoenix's recovery to that of Dubai's, which is dealing with its own property surplus while working hard to speed up a post-recession rebound. Both cities are motor-vehicle orientated but have ambitions to heavily cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr Gordon also has serious political issues to consider, such as the death threats he received after speaking out against Arizona's controversial immigration enforcement law.
Phoenix, Mr Gordon often points out, is the fifth-largest city in the US. Since he arrived in 1960, it has almost quadrupled in population, as Americans who failed to find jobs in the east tried their luck at the old frontier. Now, both Phoenix and Dubai are trying to promote growth by diversifying.
On a visit to Dubai this month, he defended the UAE's prospects in a post on Twitter. "I lost count at about 50 cranes on the horizon. Those who think the UAE economy is done are wrong," he wrote.
Mr Gordon's path to Phoenix's top office began when he moved to the city with his family from Chicago. He earned a bachelor's degree in education at the University of Arizona and later a law degree from Arizona State University - where Sultan al Mansouri, the UAE Minister of Economy, studied engineering.
Mr Gordon went on to work as a lawyer, a teacher, become a member of a local school board and the chairman of an aerial photography company before entering City Hall in 1996 as the then mayor's chief of staff. From there he joined the city council and, when he ran for mayor, was elected with 72 per cent of the vote. Four years later, he was re-elected with 77 per cent of the vote.
Mr Gordon, 58, wakes up about 4am every day to catch up on news and e-mails with his first espresso of the day. His coffee consumption is one of the few personal habits he and his colleagues joke about. A little later, part of his security detail (four detectives and a sergeant from the police department) picks him up in a Chevrolet and takes him to his office where he works briefly before taking his 11-year-old son to school. The rest of the day's schedule of meetings focused on city business tends to end with a working dinner.
"He seems relentless. He's always working," says Rob Antoniak, an Arizona utilities executive who met Mr Gordon when they both worked on a light-rail project in 2001.
Although popular in city elections, the man who is sometimes referred to as a "McCain Democrat" has declined to run for state governor or Congress. Political observers cite his lack of family funds to support a national or state campaign.
Mr Gordon has had no trouble adjusting to Dubai's high-flying lifestyle. During his recent visit he briefly stayed at the luxury Armani Hotel inside the Burj Khalifa. The place, he said, was "tailored just like Armani clothes".
A US mayor who wears Italian designer suits? "I have a few, but on my salary not a lot. Ties," he quickly points out.
Mr Gordon also dined at Mr Alabbar's house near the Bab Al Shams desert resort with the Emaar chairman's son and other friends. They spoke about US government policy, Arizona's immigration law and Phoenix's property sector, Mr Alabbar recalls.
Mr Gordon says that after the global downturn, Phoenix and Dubai had emerged the wiser. "We both probably learned that so much dependency on real estate development and not diversifying is not healthy."
Several years ago, when Mr Gordon first came to Dubai, Mr Alabbar, his brothers and Emaar board members accompanied their US visitor to a spot "in the middle of nowhere" where the men barbecued meat and boiled tea over a fire, refuelling the flames with wood they collected in the desert and the two men "bonded", Mr Gordon recalls.
"It was a beautiful night," Mr Alabbar adds.
It was also the foundation of a partnership that would eventually be formalised between the two cities. In 2008, Mr Gordon hosted a delegation of Dubai business leaders, including Mr Alabbar, for the American football Super Bowl.
The following year, Mr Gordon and Hussain Lootah, the director general of Dubai Municipality, signed an agreement backed by the US state department to make it easier for Dubai firms to do business in Phoenix. Foreign government-controlled firms had previously required additional approval to do business in Arizona.
So far, that relationship has been limited largely to sharing best practices for wastewater management and knowledge exchange between Arizona State University, Dubai's airport authority and Dubai Aerospace Enterprises, which owns an aircraft maintenance and repair company in the US state. The hope in Phoenix, which has also pursued ties with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is that such collaboration will smooth the way for future large-scale capital investment from the Gulf.
"It may take you two or three years to build that trust," says Barry Broome, the president of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, which promotes business development. "A lot of these things, like universities, are not significant from an economic standpoint but are significant from a trust standpoint."
The mayor is pushing for a direct airline service between the two cities; in April, he says he plans to host the chairman of Emirates Airline and other Dubai officials in Phoenix. For now, he seems to have gained the trust of at least one Dubai business leader.
"Sometimes you meet certain people who are rich or powerful, but you look back and say, I don't need to meet them again," Mr Alabbar says.
"[Mr Gordon] is completely the opposite, and you think, this is someone I would like to meet again and build a relationship with."
Obviously, the feeling is mutual.
