Finally got around to reading the article that Becker posted on Dubai; it is very disappointing that these problems were glossed over/not presented at all during discussion of Masdar (which is not in Dubai, but another one of the Emirates, Abu-Dhabi) and Dubai at the Ecological Urbanism conference, particuarly since (a) the discussion of Masdar and Dubai was some of the most contentious discussion at the conference and (b) Bhabha and Kwinter started the conference with a plea for an “existential” urbanism, which, if it means anything, surely must mean grounding urbanism in a deep regard for the value of human life and experience.  Which would probably, at the bare minimum, mean that knowing your designs will (at the very least, potentially) be built by slave laborers should produce a bit of cognitivie dissonance for the Westerner hired by Emiratis.  There’s some sort of wierd comment on post-colonialism in there, as well, but I haven’t teased it out yet.