December Marie Claire

The US edition of Marie Claire published a fashion story about Dubai in their December issue. Among fashion magazines in the US, Marie Claire has always been one step ahead of the rest in their fusion of fashion and global issues. Sending my best to Susan and Michelle at Marie Claire. Check out the issue if you are somewhere you can buy it.

The GCC "Euro"

News today that the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is on track to launch a common currency by 2010. The GCC includes the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman. It's an interesting development from the perspective of the regional balance of power and in the context of recent elections in many of these oil-rich states. Start collecting your coins and bills, especially the Omani rial, which is really beautiful in my opinion.

FNC Elections

Registration for the FNC elections ended yesterday and hopefully soon we will know the number of candidates who signed up in each emirate. There certainly is a lot of media coverage here of the event, with detailed instructions about signing up, the rules of the election and various interviews highlighting the importance of the elections as the first step towards an "empowerment" phase in the UAE's development. Here is an interesting story about the Dubai Chief of Police and his experience

Intelligence Hub

Dubai is known for being a regional hub for business but not for intelligence gathering. The New York Times reports today about US State Department efforts to establish intelligence gathering operations about Iran in Dubai. The proximity to Iran and large Iranian population in Dubai are cited as motivations for establishing this effort here. I tend to wonder if the 200,000 Iranians living here are necessarily an accurate cross-section of the overall Iranian population? Maybe a bit like setting up a similar effort in an Iranian community in Los Angeles? Definitely a sign of progress though, and hopefully this development is one of many towards constructive dialogue.

UAE Elections

Joining the other Gulf States, the UAE will hold its first ever elections on December 16th. The elections will decide half of the seats of the Federal National Council, an advisory body. Democratic progress in the Gulf is viewed by many as a bargaining chip with the West over larger negotiations, mostly related to economic agreements.

Rising Star

The release of Futurebrand's 2006 Country Brand Index where the UAE ranks 3rd in the 'Rising Star' category. I wonder how the results would differ had they measured Dubai rather than the UAE?

Car Show

For anyone who admires luxury cars, make sure to hang out outside Grosvenor House on a weekend night. Last night I had dinner there and afterwards witnessed the quite dramatic show on display in the front of Buddha Bar. A ring of brand new Porsches, Lamborghenis, Bentleys and Ferraris (probably 20 of them) formed a ring around the main entrance to the hotel, parked deliberately to create this visual spectacle. It sure succeeded!

News Cycles

I have been concerned of late about a fairly obvious shift in the point of view many media outlets are taking on coverage of Dubai. For a couple of years there has been a steady flow of positive articles from the "boomtown" perspective, focusing on the skyscrapers, malls, Arab miracle etc.. Yet as the DP World ports fiasco showed, the tide can turn quickly and such a shift in coverage is actually something that the media craves rather than resists. Unfortunately, the latest wave seems almost exclusively focused on the plight on unskilled laborers in the emirate. Even before the release of the recent Human Rights Watch Report, outlets from the New York Times to smaller blogs were giving this issue ample exposure. This Friday, the popular American news show 20/20 will broadcast an investigation into the issue. Being a more mainstream TV outlet, the angle of this broadcast can be extremely harmful to Dubai's image as it reaches a broader sector of American society, with less previous knowledge of the emirate and the big picture of things here. A freelance journalist friend summed the challenge up best when he asked me: "Think about a story I could do to come to Dubai. It can't be about fancy buildings, restaurants, construction sites or new malls. That angle is overplayed. Something different that sheds new light on the place." What is this new angle?

Coffee Mornings

I stopped by the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding yesterday -- this is a great organization many expats here might not know about. In addition to hosting traditional coffee mornings every Monday at 10am, the group also leads tours of Jumeirah Mosque every Tuesday and Thursday at 10am. Good way to learn more about Emirati culture as a visitor to Dubai.

Retail and Pedestrian Culture

There has been a lot of press lately around the continued growth of Dubai's retail industry. More western brands opening stores in Dubai, more tourists coming to Dubai to shop and more big malls opening to support all of this growth. It's true that the malls here are really remarkable, not only for the variety of goods they contain but also for the amazing mixture of people they attract. From an urban planning perspective, I think a lot about the lack of pedestrian culture this creates. Malls create a self-contained environment, as if you leave the actual city temporarily, park your car, and enter a city within a city. It's not just malls, think about the idea of the free-zones. When Dubai residents go to work, they often enter a free-zone like Media City, self-contained and defined by the industries and offices they host. Traditional "car cities" like Los Angeles have even developed retail as a strategy to develop neighborhoods (think Melrose and Robertson) Something to consider: could locating new retail developments in neighborhoods rather than malls work in Dubai? Yes, it is hot and people don't like to be outside, especially during the summer. And yes, there really aren't "neighborhoods" in Dubai yet, except for Bur Dubai and Deira, which may not attract the affluent retail foot traffic to sustain many retailers. But this is longer-term thinking. What kind of global city will Dubai become if the heart of its identity (the people) are always hidden away in cloistered developments?

Guess the skyline

Clue: it isn't Dubai.

Post-globalism

While reading this article by Mike Davis about Dubai, I started thinking about the notion of a "post-global" city. Davis quotes urbanist George Katodrytis:

"Dubai is a prototype of the new post-global city, which creates appetites rather than solves problems . . . If Rome was the ‘Eternal City’ and New York’s Manhattan the apotheosis of twentieth-century congested urbanism, then Dubai may be considered the emerging prototype for the 21st century: prosthetic and nomadic oases presented as isolated cities that extend out over the land and sea."

It's true. Urban studies is so often about problems and solutions. Yet Dubai is all about imagination, a blank template of sorts for builders to work out their fantasies.

CBD-10

It was an early morning today as I needed to go pick up my car (a flashy white 1996 Lexus with gold detailing). Without a car, I needed to call a taxi to travel to Sharjah and pick up my plates. Calling the taxi, I came to the conclusion that I don't know where I live! It was the strangest experience, trying to describe to the taxi company where I lived and then realizing that even I couldn't explain how to arrive at my building. In a moment of Indian-Pakistani cross-cultural communiction, another waiting taxi driver explained to mine how to get to my building.