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 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 past few years that process has accelerated to a dizzying speed as the country prepares to host soccer’s next World Cup.

In 2022, this country of 2.6 million people will open its doors to an expected 1.5 million international visitors to the sporting event.

Meanwhile, the country faces problems — most significantly those dealing with human rights — that have racked the project with external criticism and doubt from the moment Qatar won the hosting rights eight years ago.

All the while, Qatar keeps growing. Skyscrapers, shopping malls and gleaming stadiums rise. Kilometers of roads and new public transportation lines appear. Hundreds of thousands of imported laborers settle in. Trees and grass sprout — in the desert.

«Two years ago, this was a desert,» said Yasser al-Mulla, pointing to a vast expanse of grass and trees in May.

Mr. Mulla’s team cultivates fields of grass on this desert land, carves it into sheets, rolls them up like rugs, and sends them out to beautify otherwise barren areas. The group has also gathered 10,000 trees, nurturing them in shaded tents. Plants do not grow easily in Doha, which gets about five centimeters of rainfall per year.

At Khalifa International Stadium, the first of the eight proposed stadiums to be ready for competition, Mohamed Ahmed, the manager, held out his hands and exhaled. «Feel that?» he said.

Temperatures in Doha were in the mid-30s Celsius, the sunshine felt oppressive, and the field was uncovered. But the air inside was cool. It was a trick of engineering, Mr. Ahmed said, cold air from below pushing hot air out.

The organizers have promised FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, that the stadiums will be 22 degrees during games, though they are capable of cooling to 18. FIFA moved the tournament to a November start in Qatar, where the outdoor temperature can still reach the upper 20s, to escape the heat.

Almost two million foreign workers are in the country. In an audit released in February, Impactt, the organizers’ external compliance monitor, found some people working more than 72 hours per week at certain companies, and workers for one contractor who had toiled for more than 124 consecutive days.

Last November, the International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, dropped a complaint it had made in 2014 about the Qatari government’s failure to protect the rights of migrant workers. Qatar agreed to enter a cooperation agreement with the agency to further reform its labor landscape.

The World Cup is a central component of a plan not only to develop Qatar physically, experts say, but also to increase its name recognition on the global stage.

«We are modest,» said Nasser al-Khater, the assistant secretary general for the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy Tree Nursery, which is overseeing a $6.5 billion slice of what is a $200 billion infrastructure project.

«We want people to come and see,» he continued, «yes, you could be a modest person, you could be a conservative country and still be a fun-loving country, and you could still play football and you could still host a World Cup.»

Forcing grass up in the desert before the ’22 World Cup.

© 2018 The New York Times