mammoth » dubai

on “dubai-bashing”

rholmes — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 11:00:12 +0000

Todd Reisz and Rory Hyde, who are writing about research from Al Manakh at the Huffington Post, describe what they call the phenomenon of “Dubai-bashing”, and argue that the phenomenon reflects Western insecurities more than it does actual conditions in Dubai. While I have no doubt that Dubai is indeed a more complex entity than the articles they briefly quote allow (Reisz and Hyde’s most recent article in this series, “Two Songs, an Idol, and Some Money Transfers”, is one small piece of evidence of that), I’ll admit that I finished this article unconvinced that the bashing Dubai has received (and it has undoubtedly received a bashing) is really so unwarranted, or solely a product of what Koolhaas calls “[the need to] maintain and restore our own confidence in terms of the crisis we are now facing”. It is true that the financial crisis has as many roots in New York and London as in Dubai (easy evidence: foreclosed homes in the States), that Dubai is not exactly the only place in the world which abuses immigrant laborers (look to the States, again), and that it’s always worth examining one’s own errors before pointing out those belonging to others, but it’s not clear to me why those things, even cumulatively, make criticism of Dubai wholly dismissible as a product of a collective desire to “get [ourselves] through a hard spell”.

Regardless, you ought to read their argument for yourself.

slave labor and ecological urbanism

rholmes — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:56:30 +0000

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.

the dubai slave state

Stephen — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:54:38 +0000

In Dubai, everyone is a slave: Expats to their remaining sources of income, and themselves; Emiratis to The State; and the Workers, to everyone. Tragic, a must -read piece of reporting.

Via Sullivan