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.