Dubai trip report

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I spent last week in Dubai. My first overseas trip since 2003.

Dubai is essentially a tourist spot (Vegas much?). The buildings are like something out of cyberpunk media during its height in the late eighties and early nineties. Other people think the architecture is too contemporary and will date itself in time, but I like the style.  The architecture is possibly inspired by a mix of new wave Western engineers and Islamic geometric architecture ie. the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Places I visited include Burj Khalifa, Global Village, The Greens, Sharjah, Marina Walk, U.A.E University in Al Ain, Media City, and the dunes in a safari.

While Dubai seems to be planning for a post-petrol Arabian economy by way of tourism, The nation still seems to be thinking in the short term, as most nations following free-market economics do. The state seems obsessed with making and breaking world records. Like most Arabian peninsula nations, Dubai requires water imports to meet its demands. Among these demands is the frequency of fancy fountains in the malls and apartment complexes(Vegas much?). One will see a great deal of gas guzzling cars on the nascent roads. The Arab Emirati population is also gender and age imbalanced; The majority demographic is males over 30, not quite a population destined for growth and development in the coming decades. They will age and will need to replenish their population quickly.

That is where immigration comes in. The population of the Emirate is estimate as seventy-five to eighty percent immigrant. One advantage of this is that Dubai has is an international outlook, and people can come together and see beyond their tribal affiliations to what humans have in common as a race. One local said that this place has more nations represented in it than in the U.N.

The good of globalization also comes with the bad. Work is stratified along ethnic lines. The domestic help and shop clerks are Filipino and Indonesian. The construction workers and taxi drivers are South Asian, the businessmen and technology workers are European with some model-minority South Asians (family and friends among them), and the Arabs have the money to keep things running… for now. Reports of exploitation of migrant populations in lower class work are compelling. One Pashtun taxi driver learned I and my brother were American and asked for tips on how to come to America for work.

I visited a colleague one day, a South Asian who was a reporter for a major newspaper in Dubai. He saw his wages decrease from over the decade he has resided there while rent increased exponentially. The condition and architecture of the industrial segment of nearby city Sharjah resembles Pakistan. Sharjah seems the neglected cousin to the more furnished Dubai that most tourists see. My hours there brought this soaring place back to earth.

Reporter Johann Hari may be on to something in his criticisms of Dubai. However, it seems hypocritical of me to criticize Dubai while enjoying its excesses. As a tourist in this nation, I feel quite helpless about the slave-like conditions that occur just on the other side of the walls I pass by on the sidewalk. I ride a taxi and drink the imported water as I mull over the environmental damage this nation is causing. I am complicit in this gorgeous disorder that seems more obvious for not being the Western world it seeks to impress and emulate. Qatar already beat Dubai as the global diplomatic convergence center. Abu Dhabi seems at summary glance more secure in its economy if only because their financial problems haven’t occurred yet. Dubai has a long row to hoe, and I wish my friends and family there good luck.


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