So my thoughts on Dubai…
The 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”.
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