Build It And They Will Come

The UAE is amazing. The competition between Ras al-Khaimah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi is becoming a spectator sport. Each want the best of the world built or rebuilt at its doorstep, in hopes of creating a world city that will rival all the rest. It is difficult to pass judgement over this (wait for it) because every other city in the world has done and is doing the same thing to some degree for at least the past century. The difference here is these places have the funds, courtesy of the G8 and their oil-based economy (at least partially; there is a financial industry too. Ras al-Khaimah actually doesn't have much oil). So the scale of this desire is unprecedented.

Last year, there were announcements of franchises of the Louvre and the Guggenheim. The former was somewhat unexpected, but the latter not so much. And what self-repecting city wouldn't want a solid cultural institution to add to the foundation of a metropolis?

When I used to live in West Virginia, small towns would hope for a McDonalds so it would put them on the map. Dubai's intentions are on the other end of that. Stratospherically on the other end, but the end result is the same. It gives them clout in hopes of creating sustainable growth.
(Financially sustainable should be stressed here).

But when I read the latest tit for tat game going on in the UAE, I was shocked. Dubai now will recreate Lyon, France. Not just a street or two, but the whole damn thing. Apparently, a Dubai businessman fell in love with Lyon and wanted to take it home with him. I'm wondering the real motivation here though. This is a place that hasn't known urbanity in the sense of the 20th century form. It was generally a tribal prior to the British showing up, and I think the emirates reflect that heritage. Like Las Vegas, everything has to be new. And it's easier to copy than innovate.

Ras al-Khaimah is the most innovative of the three (they recently hired Rem Koolhaus to do the master plan for a new city), but even here it has the glitz of Vegas: bigger, shiner, newer.
But urban centers, I would argue, to be sustainable (both environmentally and financially here) must be granular and geologic. I mean that they must be developed on the intimate scale and must lay down new layers as time goes on. They are not works of art. They are process. This is the same reason a new downtown civic center/stadium/office tower/et al. never reinvigorates a neighborhood. Cities are not linear ideas.

Master plans are great. They solidify and document a concept at one point in time, and hopefully guide development for several years. But they change too. The best places know this, this sort of vernacular planning approach. The successful cities didn't begin with a plan. Not that they didn't have planning concepts, but there was no one thing that said this goes here and that goes there and that is the way it will be for all eternity. Like life paths laid down in this way, planned cities are existentially barren.

So the idea of both Ras al-Khaimah to start a whole city (not a town) from scratch or Dubai to import one in totality is short sighted to say the least. I see the motivation. The competition at home is tough and all the other cities around the world have had a head start. But what's the goal here? A place to live? Or a showpiece that is only interesting as long as it is new. This stuff is urban design porn. Some of it, a little more arty perhaps. And in reality, it is no different than going out to the middle of Cobb County Georgia and putting in a subdevelopment. Blowing your wad all at once is fantastic for a few moments. Then the whole place is becomes flacid and only the instigator is satisfied. Come to think of it, for the next trick, how about Cobb County - Dubai? It would make a better fit philosophically.

Read this version of the Lyon Dubai story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/01/04/wdubai104.xml

To see what Ras al-Khaimah is doing, watch this excellent piece:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/uae/index.html