Dubai: Globalization on Steroids Essay

Promotions for Dubai on CNN, BBC World, and other satellite channels show a shimmering skyline of glass and steel slip towers with their graceful curves and aquiline shapes, suggesting a distant galaxy where all the unpleasantness of urban life has been airbrushed away. But advertising almost always offers much than promise than reality, whether the product is potato chips or a city or a country. Seen through the lens of the everyday, nothing in this city is so clear. Its hard to come to terms with Dubai, be piss there is confusion even in the way it is draw by the media. It is often referred to as a Persian Gulf country (which it definitely isnt), or a city-state (wrong again), or a Gulf emirate (also not accurate, because Dubai, the city, is only part of Dubai, the emirate, which is an integral part of the United Arab Emirates). But angiotensin converting enzyme thing is clear during the trio years Ive lived here, it has undergone the kind of transformation that a city might experience once in a lifetime.Each time I snuff it my apart ment block, I drive past shells of unfinished buildings with piles of sand and rubble spilling onto the sidewalks, and Im struck by other irony of Dubai that the more the city aspires to be the premier megalopolis of the 21st century, the more it resembles 1945 Dresden. The pace of growth has left many residents wondering what the hurry is. Yet everyone seems to be in a rush. On fashion plate Zayed Road, the 12 lanes linking Dubai with Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital 100 miles to the south, drivers barrel down the fast lanes at 90 miles an hour. Late on a Friday night, drivers weave in and out of the speeding traffic, which results in an appalling accident rate that leaves crushed fenders and tangles of gnarled metal piled along the roadsides.Has any place on earth self-aggrandising as quickly or been transformed so completely? Aerial photos from the early 1960s show a dusty, ramshackle trading post enclose be-tween the Pe rsian Gulf and the Creek, Dubais inland waterway and outlet to the sea. Ten years later it was beginning to take on the look of a golden city a decade after that it had changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable. The one-runway airstrip had been replaced by an international airport, a forest of office towers had grown up along the Creek, and residential tracts had spread across barren expanses of desert that stretched to the horizon.Dubai today is often described as a Wild westerly town, and the widespread economic opportunism lends some truth to the description. Driving the expansion is neither natural resources nor old-world industrialization but rather the gears of a 21st-century scrimpingbanking, technology, trade and tourism, real estate, and media outlets. The tycoons cutting business deals in hotel restaurants and on beach-club patios are representatives of this new global economyTaiwanese bankers and Lebanese import/exporters, Russian oligarchs and Iranian property in vestors. But even Dubai is not immune from the vicissitudes of global economicsthe September worldwide monetary crisis drained almost $6 billion from its financial markets. In spite of its rapid growth and the influence of globalization on Dubai, a bit of the old city can allay be found. bye through the contended market on the Deira side of the Creek, past spice vendors displaying their wares in 100-pound sacks then go up winding, narrow lanes past the gold, silver, and tex cover dealers from Pakistan and Iran and the Indian merchants who speak fluent Arabic, their roots in Dubai reaching tolerate generations.From there it is only a short walk up to the Al-Hamadiya School, now a museum, the introductory place to offer formal education in Dubai. Exhaust-spewing water taxis still shuttle commuters across the Creek between the twisting roads of Deira and the traditional Bastakia quarter, home to the pre-oil formulas palace, a covered market, and the site of a former fort. On th e Deira side, ships unload pallets of cargo, just as they have ever since Dubai served as a comfortable transit point for much of the trade that passed between India and Africa and the rest of the Arabian peninsula. In the neighbourhoods of Jumeirah and Umm Suqeim, quiet side streets lined with white houses topped with red tile roofs glisten in the afternoon sun, suggesting the placid tranquillity of southern California when southern California was tranquil and placid. Early in the morning, Indonesian housemaids sweep driveways with modify palm branches, and South Asian labourers still use these primitive implements to clear the paths in the local parks. It is hard to reconcile such images with those more popularly associated with Dubai. in that location is the Royal Mirage Hotel, whose silent, soaring hallways and courtyards have been designed in palatial Arabian splendour. Not far away is the Madinat Jumeirah, some other hotel complex and an adjoining shopping arcade, where th e chink music of the oud is pumped into the elevators and down the narrow, serpentine corridors in an effort to re-create the sensual mysticism of the Arabian covered market. But here, too, like almost everywhere in Dubai, the traditional clashes with the modernistic, and the uneasy blend is meant to serve consumerism at the Madinat Jumeirah, res-taurants and cafs surround artificial lakes, gift boutiques cater to upscale travellers, and live music echoes from the JamBase, one of Dubais hot spots. All of the glitz has made Dubai trendy among the globetrotting business set and holidaymakers interested in a taste of the Middle Eastas long as it is tempered with a hefty dose of Club Med but the changing character of the city is not endorsed by everyone.Among so-called locals, or Emirati nationals, there is increasing fear that their culture will eventually succumb to Westernization and foreign influence. Such apprehension is justified, for the demographics are not on their side. Emi ratis now flier for only 20 percent of the population (an official estimate, probably inflated) within 20 years, as more foreigners pour in from South Asia, the Far East, Russia, and Africa, the circumstances is likely to fall to the sin-gle digits.But it is hard for locals to grumble too loudly when they have also been seduced by the global consumer ethos. After midday pray-ers on a blazing Friday afternoon, they head for the blissfully cool shopping malls, as do Indian and Filipino families and British expatriates, to scoop up the latest in busy phones and other electronic gadgets. Women display designer handbags over their flowing black abayas but wear blue jeans under them, and many young men co-occurrence their crinkly clean kandouras with a baseball cap instead of the traditional white headdress. Out in the parking lot, families cram the backs of their Range Rovers and Ford Explorers with flexible shopping bags and a months groceries. The good life has created a sedentary life, and with it a sharp rise in obesity and diabetes.As though suddenly seeing the need to change direction, Dubai has begun making desperate attempts to preserve its past. In April 2007 the Dubai Municipality issued a ruling ordering the preservation of more than 2,000 buildings it considered having historical meaning in the United Arab Emirates. But the breakneck development all over the city makes this a fools errand. Glossy advertisements for unbuilt real estate tracts cover the arrivals hall at the airport, fill billboards beside the highway entrance ramps, and push the news off the front pages of the local news-papers. The inside pages promise more one full page ad shows a Venetian gondolier, against a backdrop of faux Mediterranean chic, paddling along an artificial canal, past caf tables with Western and Asian patrons relaxing beneath palm trees. The most widely advertised development is now the Lagoons, a name that, like the Greens, Springs, Lakes, and Meadows, belies th e arid land it occupies.Indeed, image more than oil (little of which ever existed in Dubai anyway) is now the citys most valuable export. But what reality might that image exploit? The city was never one of the great centres of Muslim learning or Arab culture, like Cairo or Damascus. It has always been a centre for trade, a way station for commerce. Even today it boasts no expansive mosques shopping malls are the grandest edifices, and the best-known universities are imported satellite campuses from the United States, England, and Australia. So with no great cultural legacy to celebrate, Dubai has embraced the culture of celebrity. Last February, tiger Woods was once again victorious in the Dubai Desert Classic, and Roger Federer tried (unsuccessfully) to defend his title in the Dubai Tennis Championships. A year ago George Clooney promoted his motion picture Michael Clayton at the Dubai International Film Festival, and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been spotted frolicking wit h their children on the beach of the Burj Al Arab, the sail-shaped hotel that is the citys current signature landmark.Dubai is often described as an Arabian Disneyland, and the characterization is not wide of the mark. Tourists, residents, and celebrities (including Michael Jackson and Rafael Nadal) have slid down the foaming cascades at the Wild Wadi water park. Across Sheikh Zayed Road, the enclosure for the indoor ski slope at the Mall of the Emirates angles into the sky like a giant airplane hangar tipped on end, gleaming with a streak of lurid colour at nightfall. To accommodate the 15 million tourists a year that the city is planning to host by 2010, another resort complex of 30 hotels and 100 cinemas was sketched out on the city planners boards, but as a sign that even Dubais aspirations have been tempered, the project has been put on hold. Not, however, the Mall of Arabia, which promises to surpass the West Edmonton Mall as the worlds largest shopping and entertainment comp lex.The most weighty feature of Dubai isnt the George Jetson architecture, or even the Burj Dubai, destined to be the tallest building in the world when completed, but the fact that people who would normally be at each others throats in their home countriesIndians and Pakistanis, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Serbs and Bosnians, Ethiopians and Eritreansmanage to live and work together in remarkable harmony. This is also part of the legacy of Dubai, that for generations it has served as a crossroads of cultures and a transit point for people as well as goods, and so it evolved into a tolerant neutral space where the trivial feuds of other parts of the world have no place. The downside of this polyglot society is a paucity of the shared concerns that can form a favorable knowingness and hold a society together.I dont want Hezbollah running my country, the Lebanese receptionist at a medical clinic says when I claim her thoughts on the fallout of the Israel-Lebanon war. That issue is a nonstarter for the Asian staff who share her office. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman the Pakistani security guard outdoor(a) my apartment building croons, 2 days after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who spent part of her political exile in Dubai. Being so far from the caf tables of Lahore or Karachi, it is probably the first chance hes had to pour out praise for the populist leader. Dubai is just a short airplane hop from the crises in Sudan, Iraq, and Palestine, but in an odd irony, this global city remains blissfully alienated from the pressing global issues that surround it. Car bombings in Baghdad and street battles in Gaza seem to exist in some parallel universe far from Dubais beach clubs and poolside barbecues.If talk radio is a barometer of popular sentiment, Dubai lacks social angst, or even concern about the worlds troubles. On Property Week, callers swap tips on the latest real estate investments. On another show, listeners offer advice on ways to kill time i n traffic and compare the brunch buffets and weekend getaway packages offered by five-star hotel chains. One program is disposed to nuanced analysis of rugby, soccer, and cricket matches for United Kingdom and subcontinent expatriates. When the local English daily celebrated its 35th anniversary, readers praised the paper for its coverage of business, sports, and entertainment, but there was no han-k-ering for more articles on inter-national current events, some fright-ening-ly close to home. Life in Dubai is not all whimsical indulgence, however, for vice has arrived as an inseparable part of the global village. Dubais crime rate, still modest by Western standards, has risen to a level that would have been unknown a generation ago.Street crimes are still rare but drug seizures are not, and black markets in consumer goods have sprung up. (In a caper that Butch Cassidy would have envied, a gang of thieves drove two stolen cars through an entrance of the upscale Wafi City Mall, smash ed a jewellery store display window, and made off with the goods.) Where economic adventurism thrives, so does the worlds oldest profession. Prostitutes from China, the Philippines, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet republics hover near hotel entrances, hoping to snag returning guests. To its credit, Dubai can be called a true microcosm, but its hard to reckon that a coherent society can be composed of guest workers who have migrated solely for lucrative jobs and have no longterm stake in the citys future.Beneath the veneer of harmony is the disturbing sense that everyone knows his or her place. Class asserts itself in an unsavoury caste system where national and ethnic individualism determines whether one is offered employment or a lease for an apartment. The citys reputation as a haven of safety and security in a troublesome part of the world is upheld by affirming an old world order left by the colonial power Dubai would like to believe it has moved beyond. neighbo rly equality is a noble ideal promoted by the government but flouted in practice, proving once again that the democratic society is still a modern notion, at war with the more widespread tendency of human beings to create a hierarchy. A landlord may refuse to rent apartments to bachelors, the code word for men from the Asian subcontinent working in Dubai who may be supporting wives and children back home.The term would never apply to an unmarried German electrical engineer or a Canadian English teacher. Eight years, a taxi driver replies when I ask how long he has been plying the roads of Dubai, and I know this manner 12 hours a day, six days a week. On Friday afternoons he probably goes to the closest Western Union office, like hundreds of others, to wire money back to his family in Mumbai or Peshawar. Class asserts itself also in the division between servers and the served. I still feel a little awkward when supermarket clerks address me formally and the deliveryman from Pizza Hu t (Ahmad, according to his name tag) is overly grateful for a modest tip.But I remind myself that since Dubai is not a republic and few of its residents come from democratic countries, there is no way its society could resemble one. If someone had to pinpoint one spot on earth that epitomizes the most unsavoury aspects of globalization, Dubai could be Exhibit A. It is a place where the whims of a consumerist society overwhelm a simple native Bedouin culture, the predilections of the affluent obliterate local mood and ecology, and the divide between rich and poor is unapologetically laid bare.Discussion pointsRead the above account of Dubai and discuss the following questions in groups 1. To what extent can the Dubai level be regarded as the epitome of Globalisation? Explain your answer. 2. In what ways can Dubai be regarded as vulnerable? 3. What negative aspects of the Dubai story can you rank? 4. How might these negative aspects be mitigated?