DOHA, Qatar — The roads here can be impervious to GPS navigation. Drive around the city, and the green line on the screen will start interlacing into useless shapes. The robot voice will begin to contradict itself.
Qatar has been this way, to an extent, for more than two decades, since a gas boom transformed the nation’s fortunes. It has grown denser, taller and ever more unrecognizable (to humans and machines) from one day to the next. But in the last few years that process has accelerated to a dizzying speed as the country prepares to host soccer’s next World Cup.