1 Hallucination/Phantasmagoria
2 Giganticism: The Edifice Complex
3 Global marketing, the contemporary nomad and the difficulty in appending sophistication instead of understanding historical process (Trotsky)
4 Global Finance: Oil and War
5 Feudalism
6 Terrorism: Fear as a gift to oil producers
7 Flipping for profit- but what about the flop?
8 Women
9 Slavery
10 Comparisons to Germania (Albert Speer)
So my thoughts on Dubai…
ReplyDeleteThe opening section of this essay, by Mike Davis, gives a good account of how most people in the world view Dubai; it is a weird and crazy place which has grown out of the dessert over the last few years, it is the place to go for the ultimate phantasmagoria experience, it’s Las Vegas and Disneyland’s freakish love child, who’s role models are Jordon and Jodie Marsh, pumped full of drugs and allowed to run wild.
But what most people don’t realise, or indeed choose to turn a blind eye towards, are the underlying circumstances from which this city has been built. The quote from the session “it is like a lot of smiling people at a party” really helps to sum up the feeling that I would get if I were to visit this crazy place. This is a city built by benefiting on a terror fearing world in which we live and the fact that we need oil. This is a city which has benefited on exploiting people, workers living in poor conditions being paid very little for working long hours. There is no real reason for the developments, it’s just because they can and they want to be bigger and better than anyone else.
This is a city that’s architecture basically flaunts to world “thanks for all the money”.
Mike Davies’ article on Dubai starts by describing the future, but as it was written in 2006, the future is now. Some of the attractions that he mentions are in the process of being completed so that what seemed almost beyond belief is today a reality. The (wise?) campaign by al-Maktoum to redirect the country’s economy seems to have worked as today only 6% of it comes from oil, a declining resource. I am deeply troubled by the treatment of the construction industry workforce. It sits so uncomfortably that a ‘pleasureland’ should be built on suffering and we don’t do anything about it, except pay up and expect ‘world class’! Do holiday goers realise that this is what they endorse? The whole premise of Dubai relies on globalisation, with the realisation that a market can be located almost anywhere in the world with good communication and transport links. But what is the future of Dubai? The recent global recession has already had an impact with flats that were once so easily rented out now sitting empty. What if there is no miracle answer to the energy crisis, no solution to global warming and no progress on food shortages? Could Dubai end up a ghost city because no one can get enough fuel together to fly there, and if they could it would be so unbearably hot with no air conditioning?
ReplyDeleteA world built on slaves
ReplyDeleteInitially I was one of the many people taken in by the ubiquitous nature of Dubai. One cannot help hearing that the best technology advances are being implemented in another skyscraper in Dubai, which proclaims to be, yet again the biggest and the best. I craved visiting this new jewel which has emerged along the Persian Gulf. Having read about Dubai it was obvious that it has become the new version of Disneyland on an overdose of architectural steroids.
It has even now become the new prime real estate for celebrities and the wealthy Arabs who live there. It has now become the symbols of your status for the buyers, investors and architects. They obliviously or maybe even knowingly enjoy the taste of poison apple that is Dubai without realising the reality of what this new wonderland is built on.
This world of opulence is formed on the backs of slaves who are tricked into working there with promises of huge pay packets, but then offered only a few dollars a day and the debt of the plane ticket hanging over their head. They all live in shanty towns hidden away from the tourists!
How can we allow this to happen in modern day? Many of the residence are champions against the injustices of those less fortunate but are happy to turn a blind eye so that they can have a piece of the much coveted pie.
The title could not be anymore correct...’fear and money’, that is the stark reality of Dubai. Those who have the money enjoy the fantasy and self indulgence that is on offer whereas the slaves live in fear, hidden away in shanty towns becoming the dirty secret of Dubai.
http://melisavillar.blogspot.com/2009/10/rotten-till-core-9th-oct-09-fear-and.html
ReplyDelete