LEARNING FROM DUBAI: IS IT POSSIBLE?

In the last few years, the Persian Gulf city of Dubai has exploded from the Arabian sands onto the world stage. Oil wealth, land rent, and so-called informal economic practices have blanketed the urbanscape with enormous enclaved developments attracting a global elite, while the economy runs on a huge army of migrant workers from the labor-exporting countries of the Indian Ocean and Eurasian regions. The speed and aesthetic brashness with which the city has developed have left both scholarly and journalistic observers baffled and reaching for facile stereotypes with which to capture its city’s identity and significance to the history of urban planning, architecture, social theory, and capitalism.

In The Superlative City, contributors from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and colleagues from the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Denmark offer the most serious analyses of the city to appear to date. Remarkable aspects of Dubai, such as the size and theming of real estate projects and the speed of urbanization, are situated in their local and global architectural, political, and economic contexts. Planning tactics and strategies are explained. The visually arresting aspects of architecture are critiqued but also placed within a holistic view of the city that takes in the less sensational elements, such as worker camps and informal urban spaces.

In my chapter, I describe the kinds of formal experimentation
that are occurring in Dubai. Although even Las
Vegas’s teachable excesses can appear to pale in comparison
to those of Dubai, a key to understanding the Gulf
city lies in seeing how it partially cites and incorporates
well-regarded planning and design traditions. It is this
excessive citation and its amplification in terms of size,
repetition, and class segregation that are Dubai’s specific
contribution to the current global urban landscape.