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

[kEiThZ]

Meh still BS. I think you are a little too sensitive. You know people do look at other people.

Billy, the point I was trying to make earlier is that if I can be considered far too sensitive for having people look at me (and I really don't mind) then would that not apply to our letter writer here too? Should she not considered the fact that she might draw attention too?

Going back to the original post....Here's a dubai resident's response:

http://ixpats.com/dubai-expats/2008...to-move-to-dubai-deconstructing-the-why-nots/

What I was trying to do originally and am insistent on is that we don't assess the place out of context. Sure, we should criticize it's poor treatment of workers....and we should do this all over the Gulf. The UAE is hardly an exception to the rule. And we should encourage sustainable development. To that end, it should be noted that a number of Vancouver planners are involved in the development of Abu Dhabi which has taken a significantly different path than Dubai. So I think it's quite misplaced to talk about Dubai's failures without talking about its successes. And without talking about it in context (its neighbouring emirates, the Arab world, the developing world, etc.)

 

[Hydrogen]

Off topic, but...

kEiThZ, good to see that you've been resurrected.

 

[Prometheus The Supremo]

18.Taxi drivers are dangerous and smell.
Not only is this ‘reason’ racist but also extremely biased and ignorant.

i fail to see how this "reason" was racist. i think it's more of a hasty generalization. of course, if the person that made the statement said "all the taxi drivers i encountered were dangerous and smelled" instead, it wouldn't be a generalization but an account of personal experience.

as far as i know, taxi drivers are not a race or even an ethnicity. to say someone is racist for making that statement (Taxi drivers are dangerous and smell.) which was a generalization, you are implying that all taxi drivers are of the same race, which its self could be seen as racist.

 

[wonderboy416]

i fail to see how this "reason" was racist. i think it's more of a hasty generalization. of course, if the person that made the statement said "all the taxi drivers i encountered were dangerous and smelled" instead, it wouldn't be a generalization but an account of personal experience.

as far as i know, taxi drivers are not a race or even an ethnicity. to say someone is racist for making that statement (Taxi drivers are dangerous and smell.) which was a generalization, you are implying that all taxi drivers are of the same race, which its self could be seen as racist.

That was quite possibly the greatest response I have ever read on the UT forums.

 

[Blovertis]

as far as i know, taxi drivers are not a race or even an ethnicity. to say someone is racist for making that statement (Taxi drivers are dangerous and smell.) which was a generalization, you are implying that all taxi drivers are of the same race, which its self could be seen as racist.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I know red flags would be raised in my mind if I heard someone express that opinion. A co-worker of mine once declared that she never took taxis in Toronto because they were grubby and the drivers rude. I wondered at the time if it had something to do with the fact that 98 percent of cabs in this city are driven by brown people.

 

[wonderboy416]

You are entitled to your opinion, but I know red flags would be raised in my mind if I heard someone express that opinion. A co-worker of mine once declared that she never took taxis in Toronto because they were grubby and the drivers rude. I wondered at the time if it had something to do with the fact that 98 percent of cabs in this city are driven by brown people.

LOL, I don't think you understood his response at all. What you are implying could be viewed as racist, not your co-worker.

I've sure had my share of non-brown grubby, rude cab drivers in TO.

 

[Hydrogen]

You are entitled to your opinion, but I know red flags would be raised in my mind if I heard someone express that opinion. A co-worker of mine once declared that she never took taxis in Toronto because they were grubby and the drivers rude. I wondered at the time if it had something to do with the fact that 98 percent of cabs in this city are driven by brown people.

I can recall people having similar sentiments towards taxi drivers in Montreal during the late 70's. A vast majority of them were white at that time.

I think you might be a bit oversensitive on this issue.

 

[Archivist]

So I think it's quite misplaced to talk about Dubai's failures without talking about its successes. That's fair enough. I will concede that in the context of the Arab world, the UAE's culture is permissive and open to the west. They are building a large transit infrastructure, which I imagine is to benefit only expats, since I doubt true Emeratis will ever take it. There are air-conditioning bus shelters, which are both needed and highly civilized, and the shelters were quite attractive, too. Much of the beach of the city is open to the public and is well maintained (though out by the big resorts it turns completely private - but I have no qualms with that given the kilometres of free sand closer into town). Some of the buildings they have commissioned are gorgeous (though most are not). They are interested in sustainability issues (though frankly, having people live in the desert strikes me as unsustainable to begin with - but what other choice do they have?).

There, I've said some nice things.

 

[jenny_zhang]

Wow, so it's true....they are overwhelimingly racist...and jenny's defending it.

I didn't defend it. I'm saying it's a natural result of the kind of society that Toronto is, at the moment.

 

[wonderboy416]

I didn't defend it. I'm saying it's a natural result of the kind of society that Toronto is, at the moment.

We have obviously lived in very different Toronto's. Perhaps your misconceptions are skewing the reality of the city for you.

People tend to to over-extend and generalize their experiences... "don't buy a GM car, they're junk, my uncle had one and it always broke down" - doesn't mean all GM's are junk, just that one person got a dud, and for all we know they didn't take care of it properly. I would apply to the same logic to your relative, one racist business owner does not lead to an entire city full of them. If you look at the whole, Toronto pulls of being a city of many cultures probably better than anywhere else in the world and we should all be proud of that.

 

[jenny_zhang]

You also thought that Korea was a great example of human rights, so........(when human rights is measured by the daily experience of young Western males, there can be a skewed perception of what the term actually means.)

As for Toronto....My response would be "shrug". Sometimes it's a unique city where people of many cultures can interact, free of racism and bigotry and for that reason I would never live anywhere else, including my former home (Singapore). And sometimes it's just a confusing mess of ethnic and cultural enclaves, isolationist communities, children of immigrants with identity crisis', subtle racism, and what have you......but I suppose you'd have to see this first hand to really understand it.

 

[Hydrogen]

...but I suppose you'd have to see this first hand to really understand it.

Who says he hasn't? What I always find fascinating is the casual assumption that anyone who is white (which is yet another outdated "racial" designation) is either somehow unaware of the ethno-cultural fabric of the city, or not a member of such a community.

 

[wonderboy416]

Of course I haven't seen it... DUH!
I also live in a "young western male" bubble in Korea and have no idea what's going on around me. In 3 months I've learned to read, write and understand much of Korean - and I've done so by networking almost entirely with native Koreans and learning a whole lot about their culture. Modern Korea shines brightly if you were to compare it to say.. DUBAI in terms of human rights. There is mandatory military service for Korean males and us foreign teachers were subject to a mandatory AIDS/drug test in order to get our alien registration cards (which is considered a human rights violation in some circles) but those are minor compared to what's going on in some "advanced" nations *ahem* UAE... *cough cough* China...

Btw... I found this picture of Dubai on SSC, it looks like MCC on steroids, except replace the grass with dirt and the tract housing with a giant man-made island shaped like a palm tree, simply because they could. Come on Hazel.. they're pulling ahead!

Incredibly depressing, I think the collective IQ of Dubai's planning department is somewhere between 1 and 3.

 

[jenny_zhang]

That's great wonderboy. I can only wish that my experience in Korea could have been so positive and not laced with discrimination and Sinophobia, but that doesn't matter. A country's human rights is, after all, measured by how well European men are treated there. Of course, if you're a white english teacher, there's a good chance that you got your job because of discrimination towards someone like me, but hey, who cares about that.

I seem to have struck a chord with my so-called "stereotyping" of wonderboy as the traditional young western expat but I got that impression after reading your initial moving post, not before. That's not stereotyping, just observation. I didn't say I was judging.

Who says he hasn't? What I always find fascinating is the casual assumption that anyone who is white (which is yet another outdated "racial" designation) is either somehow unaware of the ethno-cultural fabric of the city, or not a member of such a community.

Well is it a stretch to think that someone who isn't Chinese isn't going to know about what kind of private conversations Chinese families and relatives have amongst each other on these kind of topics? Many of them won't be pleasant to people who have grown up learning about tolerance and diversity and equality. This happens in other immigrant communities as well I would assume. Not that I want to over-inflate this....

 

[kEiThZ]

Of course I haven't seen it... DUH!
I also live in a "young western male" bubble in Korea and have no idea what's going on around me. In 3 months I've learned to read, write and understand much of Korean - and I've done so by networking almost entirely with native Koreans and learning a whole lot about their culture. Modern Korea shines brightly if you were to compare it to say.. DUBAI in terms of human rights. There is mandatory military service for Korean males and us foreign teachers were subject to a mandatory AIDS/drug test in order to get our alien registration cards (which is considered a human rights violation in some circles) but those are minor compared to what's going on in some "advanced" nations *ahem* UAE... *cough cough* China...

Btw... I found this picture of Dubai on SSC, it looks like MCC on steroids, except replace the grass with dirt and the tract housing with a giant man-made island shaped like a palm tree, simply because they could. Come on Hazel.. they're pulling ahead!

Incredibly depressing, I think the collective IQ of Dubai's planning department is somewhere between 1 and 3.

Let's leave the human rights issue out for now. It's hard to argue this one. Like I said earlier. It has to be put in context. If we're going to talk about SK then we should include the whole era post-WWII including the military dictatorships. And perhaps we should include the other half of the peninsula as well. The UAE on the other hand is barely 3 decades old (not much for a country) and by comparison a paragon of human rights compared to the region it's in. Let's see where they end up in another 30 years. I don't dispute that they need to improve their human rights record but not everything is cut and dry. Like you have pointed out, many would consider mandatory military service and a mandatory AIDS test (neither of which the UAE has) to be a violation of their human rights. Does that mean that SK has a terrible human rights record? Probably not.

Stick to the theme of this forum....

As for Dubai's development. What of it? Try building a metropolis from absolute scratch in 30 years with virtually no indigenous urban planning and architectural talent (when they started at least) to draw upon. It's rather unfair to compare them to cities in Europe or in Asia that are hundreds of years old and had pre-existing development patterns. For a fair comparison ask yourself what any of these cities would have done to accommodate the massive growth that cities in the UAE have had to undertake if they weren't restricted by their pre-existing settlement patterns. I don't think Dubai's track record is all that bad from this perspective. And of course, they are still developing with newer developments focused much more on improving the urban landscape.

Finally, the thread isn't a pissing contest between SK and the UAE. Quick...pick your favourite Asian country.... We get that you think SK is better. Fair enough. Let's try on stay on topic, which was the original letter complaining about the issues with living in Dubai. Here's a fairly balanced response to that letter:

http://ixpats.com/dubai-expats/2008...to-move-to-dubai-deconstructing-the-why-nots/