Dubai is a product. It is a commodity of corporate driven globalization, created to enrich enrich the rich through monetary duplication. But debt-driven growth is catching up with Dubai’s creators, which, like many of the revelations exposed in the wake of the Great Recession, looks increasingly like a Ponzi scheme. That shiny city state on the Persian Gulf is now mired in loans, and the firm responsible for much of the real estate boom there, Dubai World (the same company that sparked a controversy over US port security in 2006), has asked for a “standstill” by its creditors.
The city is a prime example of modern capitalism. That is, growth feeds growth feeds growth, and eventually, comes crashing down. Growth as an end and a means. Unsustainable consumption as economic kindling, culminating in an economic explosion, and leaving behind burnt-out hulls of lavish hotels, garish man-made islands, and complex financial schemes.
Luckily, unlike in many foreign fueled development parts of the world, the local population won’t be totally fucked because, well, there is almost no local population. Dubai is 75% immigrants, drawn in by bright golden lights in the middle of the desert promising a bright golden future. And it’s them that will be fucked. But those running the whole thing never really thought much about the long term. They didn’t look into the future to question whether or not the city they were building was anything more than a capital sink–a place to store and generate income. A gift that would keep on giving as long as growth was maintained. Tell that to the guy who moved his entire life and family to Dubai only to get laid off when it all fell apart
So they build an international city-scape in the desert, modeling each section after economic hubs from all over the world. They took the capitalist model and pasted in the most unlikely of places, and with a bit of tinsel, managed to keep the illusion growing. This is the future of unfettered corporate globalization: drops of capitalist splendor crashing into all corners of the world, making some people richer but dashing the dreams of others when it turns out to be a sham.
Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic for the LA Times claims, points out:
Since Dubai’s rise was in part a result — and therefore a symbol — of American decline, U.S. reporters have been quick to play up the emirate’s subsequent troubles, sometimes in breathless if largely anecdotal stories about its artificial islands sinking into the gulf or laid-off expats abandoning their cars at the airport, tracing plaintive goodbye messages with their fingers in dust-covered windshields. It’s as if Dubai’s real estate crash somehow represents a green shoot for the notion of unshakable American wealth and influence.
The logic of such celebrators is flawed. Dubai is not a symbol of American decline, rather, of American success. Success in exporting an unsustainable brand of capitalism backed by nothing but non-existent money, tearing through natural resources and people’s labor with no regard for the end-game. Whether or not Dubai bounces back from this particular bubble is irrelevant–it’s still a potent reminder that in the corporatist global market, the bigger the boom, the harder the bust, and when things seem too good to be true, they are.
