Apr 10, 09:02 pm
Dubai: New Frontiers and the Countergeography of Globalization
Presentation at the The Ninth Sharjah Urban Planning Symposium, April 2-4, 2006 – Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
(above Dubailand)
According to Auge, the world is increasingly made up of non-places, which are particular common in the sphere of mobility and consumption. Hyper-mobility and the neutralization of place are the new attributes of the emerging 21st century generic and global city. Despite this, globalization may prove to generate more diversity than originally thought. The encounter with globalization is fragmented. It is always local with trans-global network systems. Those cities capable to survive the dichotomy, of the local vs. the global, will survive the new challenges of the 21st century. Dubai may be one of them. There are no centres, nor boundaries to transgress, any more. The centre has lost its meaning. In fact the traditional centre and the global centre are two completely separated issues. The second one now can extend into a metropolitan area in the form of a grid of nodes of intense business activity. The new trans-urbanization creates trans-territorial centres of intense economic transactions. These transactions take place partly in the digital space and partly through conventional transport and travel.
(above two images: Dubai Marina: Imaginary and Hyper-Real)
Cities may end up as production sites, within the new global economy: we are seeing an internationalized labour market for manual and service workers; there is a new geographically defined immigrant community. The global city concentrates diversity. Its spaces are inscribed with the dominant corporate culture but also with a multiplicity of other cultures and identities, notably through immigration.
(above Dubai Deira street culture)
(above Dubai Urban Instensification project by Solmaz in the studio of George Katodrytis)
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