"Is this a new Margaret Atwood novel, Philip K. Dick’s unpublished sequel to Blade Runner or Donald Trump on acid? No. It is the Persian Gulf city-state of Dubai."
Writing in the New Left Review, Mike Davis has produced a fascinating and extremely opinionated account of the “new” Dubai (http://newleftreview.org/?view=2635#_edn37). The opening description brilliantly evokes the hyperreal landscape of the city from the air:
"The scene below is astonishing: a 24-square-mile archipelago of coral-coloured islands in the shape of an almost-finished puzzle of the world. […] The ‘Palms’ are connected by causeways to a Miami-like beachfront crammed with mega-hotels, apartment skyscrapers and yachting marinas. Out of a chrome forest of skyscrapers soars a new Tower of Babel. It is an impossible half-mile high: taller than the Empire State Building stacked on top of itself. […]Your jellyfish-shaped hotel, the Hydropolis, is, in fact, exactly 66 feet below the surface of the sea. You round off the afternoon with some snowboarding on the local indoor snow mountain. Outdoors, the temperature is 105°."
This photo seems to sum it up! (Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/byfon/404837044/)
Davis’ observations are too detailed and numerous to mention, but his insights are original and thought-provoking. He states that Dubai hopes to attract 15 million overseas visitors a year by 2010, three times as many as New York City. He describes Dubai as being so commercial that its Emir would in fact be more accurately termed a CEO! Since the high prices of the 1970s, savvy re-investment from oil revenues has been the order of the day.
Davis is at his most convincing presenting his arguments about Dubai’s economic development, contending that possessing less oil than other emirates such as Abu Dhabi has been a blessing in disguise. Why? Because it has encouraged its rulers to concentrate on other sources of wealth, cultivating the city a commercial and recreational hub. In his opinion, Dubai has “short-circuited” the commercial evolution experienced in Western Europe, the United States and parts of Asia in order to enjoy “the perfected synthesis of shopping, entertainment and architectural spectacle.”
Dubai will derive all of its GDP from non-oil activities like tourism and finance by 2010. Davis draws attention to the importance of brand in Dubai’s success: "If there was no Burj Dubai, no Palm, no World, would anyone be speaking of Dubai today? You shouldn’t look at projects as crazy stand-alones. It’s part of building the brand."
In many ways, Dubai represents the ultimate capitalist fantasy: “an oasis of free enterprise without income taxes or trade unions”. In an appearnance on ABC News, Hari Sreenivasan said that “one of the ways that this trading town along a creek has reformulated itself into a megalopolis’, writes an abc News commentator, ‘is by throwing in everything and the kitchen sink as incentives for companies to invest in and relocate to Dubai. There are free-trade zones where 100 per cent foreign ownership is allowed, with no individual or corporate taxes or import/export duties whatsoever.’ The original free-trade zone in the port district of Jebel Ali now has several thousand resident trading and industrial firms, and is the major base for American corporations selling to the Saudi and Gulf markets.
Unfortunately he overcooks his analysis at the end, stepping into the realms of intellectual indignation by calling Dubai’s affinity for pastiche and architectural parody “a nightmare of the past”.
Don’t believe everything he says. Some people are too clever for their own good.
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