Beyond the Spectacle
DUBAI MARINAAbout 160 residential high-rises are sprouting up around the three-mile waterway—designed by the British firm Halcrow and master-planned by HOK—which connects to the Arabian Gulf on each end for natural circulation. The channel is surrounded by a public walkway and will contain 700 berths for yachts and powerboats, as well as stations for water taxis.
Choppershoot
Dubai’s insane rate of development is easy to misinterpret—even caricature—but the cliché obscures the city’s more serious ambitions.
By Stephen Zacks
Posted November 21, 2007
Fifty years from now, New York will be considered the economic and cultural capital of the previous century, filled with quaint artifacts of another time and places to visit for the sake of nostalgia, but not the center of world culture—somewhat like how we think of Paris today compared to 100 years ago. Federal immigration restrictions, the religious police, and the protection of large corporations from foreign competition will have cut off our biggest sources of wealth—invention and innovation—and historic preservation will have saved the unique character of neighborhoods and conserved innumerable buildings but killed the spirit that made the city the greatest of its time.
The megacity of Dubai, one of the seven federal states of the United Arab Emirates, will be the new economic and cultural capital of the world, spanning its neighboring emirates of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and beyond in one urbanized mass, rich in the biggest source of renewable energy—sunlight—a pioneer in sustainability and new technology, and conveniently located within easy travel distance of a population of more than two billion in the Middle East, Europe, India, and Africa. In the six years since the Twin Towers fell, a thousand skyscrapers have been rising on the Arabian Gulf.
Posted November 21, 2007
Fifty years from now, New York will be considered the economic and cultural capital of the previous century, filled with quaint artifacts of another time and places to visit for the sake of nostalgia, but not the center of world culture—somewhat like how we think of Paris today compared to 100 years ago. Federal immigration restrictions, the religious police, and the protection of large corporations from foreign competition will have cut off our biggest sources of wealth—invention and innovation—and historic preservation will have saved the unique character of neighborhoods and conserved innumerable buildings but killed the spirit that made the city the greatest of its time.
The megacity of Dubai, one of the seven federal states of the United Arab Emirates, will be the new economic and cultural capital of the world, spanning its neighboring emirates of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and beyond in one urbanized mass, rich in the biggest source of renewable energy—sunlight—a pioneer in sustainability and new technology, and conveniently located within easy travel distance of a population of more than two billion in the Middle East, Europe, India, and Africa. In the six years since the Twin Towers fell, a thousand skyscrapers have been rising on the Arabian Gulf.
posted by Kangaroo Brisbane Australia at 6:14 PM
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