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Dubai: An Architectural Masterpiece layered on a Third World Country?

kEiThZ said:
The worst in my mind, are those who seem to be cheering for Dubai to fail. We in the west should be worried about that prospect. If the most moderate entity on the Arabian peninsula were to go under, what's the prospects for improved relations with the Middle East for the west? Dubai has encouraged its citizens (however lazy) to study science, engineering, medicine, media, etc. instead of churning out Islamic Studies graduates like neighbouring Saudi Arabia. We can laugh at the stream of the 'world's biggest' or 'world's tallest' whatever coming from Dubai. But isn't that a heck of a lot better than other Gulf states funding Wahhabi mosques in our back yards? We should be careful what we wish for. Our guilt and envy might give us exactly the type of dystopia we think we want in the Middle East.
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Your giving Dubai way to much credit here. It's like your suggesting that it is some sort of glue holding the middle east countries together. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar are just as moderate as Dubai. Dubai going belly up is by no means going to cause these countries to start funding extremist movements or cause some sort of Arab nationalist movement in the middle east.
 
dougie8 said:
Your giving Dubai way to much credit here. It's like your suggesting that it is some sort of glue holding the middle east countries together. Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar are just as moderate as Dubai. Dubai going belly up is by no means going to cause these countries to start funding extremist movements or cause some sort of Arab nationalist movement in the middle east.
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Oman perhaps....but try buying a drink in Kuwait....when I grew up there Kuwait was known as Saudi lite.

The anti-jewish issue notwithstanding (and on this point, the UAE is still far more moderate than any other Gulf state - you will find the odd Israeli businessman who travel through Dubai) the UAE has a good degree of religious freedom. Dubai's founder (sheikh rashid) himself actually paid for the construction of various churches in the city and a hindu temple as well. Not just the churches. The Catholic School in Dubai was funded in significant measure by the Sheikh as well. There is nothing comparable in the rest of the Gulf.
 
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I know they exist (well uh obviously Koreans aren't going to be racist against Korean Canadians.....), I used to live there, but that doesn't mean we're treated the same. And that's just Chinese. It's even worse if you're Filipino or African or something more immediately noticeable (and not white). By the way I'm sure you know that it's more than just "looking like a native speaker" ... To lead into your next comment:
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I'm not convinced that Koreans are this hugely racist society... The black and Chinese Canadian teachers I know have nothing but great things to say. If anything, Koreans seem to embrace foreigners and enjoy having them in their country. The only racisms that seems to be truly problematic is the fact that most Koreans are raised hearing stories about how horrible the Japanese are.

Anyway, your arguments about "white privilege" are without any grounds and completely inappropriate and are bordering on offensive. The human rights violations in Dubai are well documented (see the number of articles linked to in this thread alone).

The sooner Dubai implodes onto itself, the better as far as I'm concerned. It's simply not worth the cost of human life (yes, the number of worker deaths is swept under the rug quite nicely) to build such a monstrosity and ecological disaster in a desert. If Dubai was left to grow organically I'm sure there'd be very little wrong with it.
 
I'm not convinced that Koreans are this hugely racist society...
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Nor would I expect you to be, for reasons which I've already discussed. I think you'll find that eventually these components of our discussion will *click* and you'll see how they fit together.

And for every anecdote you have about "this black guy I know", there are always more that are the opposite.

Anyway, your arguments about "white privilege" are without any grounds and completely inappropriate and are bordering on offensive.
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Everything is offensive to someone so I have a hard time keeping track. I think it is blatantly obvious that white foreigners are treated better nearly anywhere in the world than non-white foreigners. I didn't think this had to be discussed, it always seemed to be a given to me, having lived in many countries throughout the world.

I'm not going to sit around whining about it or start complaining, as it's not like it's anything that we can control, I only brought it up because I think raving about how well you personally are treated as an example of how open and tolerant "insert society here" is as opposed to the villainous Dubai is just a tad disingenuous.
 
I second jenny's argument. Using Dubai as an example, you'll hardly find many Brits or other 'white' expats with many complaints about how they are treated. Yet their more dark skinned counterparts would tell you otherwise. The world over there is a difference in how people are treated according to their skin colour, with the exception, ironically, being in the West.

Even as a Canadian of Indian descent, I am fairly sure if I went back with a white friend, that they would get treated better than me if we were seeking out similar services. That's just how the world is.
 
You mean that all those ugly towers that khristopher posts aren't gunna get built! What a shame!! :eek:
 
Looks like Dubai has run out of money: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...rticle1378116/

Shocking.
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I'm no profit, but it wasn't very hard to predict this.
Unlike other markets with sustainable industry, I doubt Dubai will ever get back to the ridiculous heights (literally) that it has reached. Dubai has peaked and now all the rich will be eating nice servings of humble pie over the coming years, and good on them.
 
I am against everything that is, Dubai. Sure they can build the biggest of this and that but at the end of the day, Dubai in the last 30 years was built by slave labour. People making $3 a day. And their complete disrespect for the environment. There's no way you can just build all these fake islands without an environmental consequence. All the green and lushness. That stupid new Tiger Woods golf course in Dubai takes 4 MILLION GALLONS of water a day to keep green. Gee? Maybe because it's a desert?

And why don't buildings have solar power? I mean WTF. Your in a desert. Isn't that like free energy?
 
^ By the same token, how should they develop then? Should they not develop or build anything at all? And could they not make the same argument about crazy Canadians who live in sub-zero temperatures burning up incredible amounts of resources to create nothing but hot air?

While their development effort has been over the top no doubt, and financially irresponsible, it's still the only place in the Middle East that's tried to get above and beyond oil, extremism, ethnic strife, etc. As someone who's lived there, I sincerely fear the alternative to the Dubai model. I, for one, am not happy about what this collapse means for the region.

Are they perfect? Most certainly not. But if you think they are the worst of the bunch, you really haven't been around the Middle East. And wait till you hear what they pay those same Indian construction workers in rural Gujarat. You'd be surprised but right now there are tons of Indian workers wondering if they'll have work to actually support their families back home. It might be easy to gloat but those who will suffer the worst from this will be the very workers that Westerners love to care about (remarkably the concern for their well being stops the moment they hit the tarmac in Mumbai).
 
Dubai did have (and still has) a chance to be a Hong Kong for the Middle East, the region's window to the world, and the world's window to the region. Things like trade, finance, and so forth.

The problem is that some time this decade the sheikhs had hubris and believed anything could happen, resulting in a massive speculative bubble. Hong Kong has had booms and busts, but it never racked up massive debt while building anything like indoor ski slopes, an 818 metre skyscraper, archipelagos of private islands for billionaires, and setting world record after world record for the sake of bragging rights.

Dubai's chance of becoming like Hong Kong has been reduced in the medium term, since no one will invest in a place where the government doesn't pay its debts. But people have wrongly predicted the death of Hong Kong many times, so it may be premature to proclaim the death of Dubai now.
 
I don't recall if I posted this before, but when I was in Dubai an expat wag there said that Dubai was where Architects got to plan (and sometimes build) all the stuff they thought of in Grad School.
 
From one of my favorite writers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/30/charlie-brooker-dubai-dream-crashes

In the cold light of 2009, Dubai resembles a mystical Oz that was somehow accidentally wished into existence during an insane decade-long drugs bender. Those psychedelic structures, pictured in a fever by the mad and privileged, physically constructed by the poor and exploited, now look downright embarrassing, like a Facebook photo of a drunken mistake...
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