Dubai: tourism and the end of public space

George Katodrytis
School of Architecture & Design, American University of Sharjah, U.A.E.
Email: gkatodrytis@aus.edu
 Dubai: tourism and the end of public space

Abstract
What is magnificent about photographers’ and filmmakers’ perceptions of the world is
that they introduce a new state: infinite perceptions, insensible differences. The visual
voyage through any contemporary cityscape operates like a continuous shift between eye
and mind, as though differences no longer exist between the two. The city has definitely
become a condition and a non-place. This is our foretaste of a unified urban condition.
Rem Koolhaas notes, that the contemporary city is like the contemporary airport: “all the
same”. On a similar note, Auge's condition of “supermodernity” and contention is that a
growing proportion of space lacks meaning in the classic anthropological sense. This
phenomenon is one of the three forms abundance characterizing what he terms the super
modern condition: an abundance of space, an abundance of signs and an abundance of
individualization. Yet the “new” global city, like a surreal machine, reproduces its own
new identity. This is the moment to talk about the autopoeisis of architecture and its
utopian capability: the increasing autonomy and its self-referential closure. The city has
become an immense theme park, utopian, repeatedly reproduced as an in endless
representation and fabricated in Photoshop. The paper will use the city of Dubai as a
case study and looks the emergence of a new condition dependant on consumerism: on
tourism and shopping and the end of public space. On one hand millions of tourists, like
contemporary nomads flood the city only looking for familiarity: they want to feel at
home in a strange place inhabiting constructed landscapes. On the other hand, the
contemporary shopping mall can imitate anything and has become the only form of social
space. This has lead to concentrated tourist infrastructures and mega-structure
complexes (containing hotel + apartments + mall + cinema + expo + anything goes),
which are clustered very close together. Dubai may be considered, among other new
cities, as an emerging prototype for the 21st century: prosthetic and nomadic oases
presented as isolated cities that extend out over the land and sea.

Keywords: Dubai, urbanism, tourism, shopping,

 1. Space – non-place – the generic condition
2. Photoshop Urbanism - paste-up & thematic
3. Constructed Leisure-land - tourism
4. Shopping Malls -
5. Mystery with no history
6. The paradox of the Prototype City – present /future

Space – non-place
“Dubai: The hippest city in the world” foxnews.com, October 26, 2005.
In the last twenty years, Dubai has developed at a remarkable pace to the cosmopolitan
global crossroads that it is today. Dubai thrives on newness and bigness, in an act of
ongoing self-stylization and fantasy. Hence architecture is crucial, for it defines these
elements. Little more than a grand-scale shopping mall, the city is comprised of 'mind-
zone' spaces, and of airport-like lobbies. In this theme park oriented cityscape, there is no
differentiation between old and new. Everything is recent. Yet everything seems to point
to the twin towers of consumerism and tourism. What used to be the ‘thrill’ of the urban
voyage is quickly giving way to banality and exhaustion: one has nothing more to
discover, nothing other than immense, general and non-descript spaces. The visual
voyage through the city like in any contemporary cityscape operates like a continuous
shift between eye and mind, as though differences no longer existed between the two.
The city has definitely ceased to be a site: instead, it has become a condition. Perhaps the
city has even lost its site: it tends to be everywhere and nowhere.

Figure 1: Dubai’s contemporary cityscape

Rem Koolhaas, in his well-known essay “The Generic City” which was published in the
Italian magazine Domus in 1994 contemplates the following observations, which pertain
so well to Dubai:

“1.1 Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport – “all the same”?
1.6 It is big enough for everybody. It is easy. It does not need maintenance. If it gets too
small it just expands. If it gets old it just self-destructs and renews. It is “superficial” –
like Hollywood studio lot, it can produce a new identity every Monday morning.
6.3 The Street is dead.
9.2 The Generic City had a past, once?
10.2 The only activity is shopping…
11.5 Because the Generic City is largely Asian, its architecture is generally air-
conditioned.
11.8 The apparently solid substance of the Generic City is misleading. 51% of its volume
consists of atrium.”

Photoshop Urbanism
Dubai is an extreme and complex example of urbanism. One of the fastest growing cities
in the world today, it represents the epitome of sprawling, post-industrialist and car-
oriented urban culture and most of all real estate villages and spectacular enclaves.
"Sixteen percent of all the building cranes in the world are in Dubai right now,"
Thompson said. "Sixteen percent. That's absolutely amazing for a city to have that kind
of economic development." Foxnews.com, October 26, 2005. Within it, large numbers of
transient populations are constantly in flux.
Almost overnight, the city has become a juxtaposition of barren desert, 21st-century
skyscrapers at extravagantly optimistic construction sites. The city is a large construction
site, preparing itself for the incoming international nomads: new settlers, laborers,
consultants and in-transit business travelers and tourists.

Figure 2: Dubai: Explosion of mega-scale cities

New building precincts and cities are planned as the existing fabric sprawls out to the arid
region. The explosion of mega-scale structures and satellite cities provides opportunities
for the study of new typologies of building programs and forms. Within the urban grid,
and the monotonous and predictable urban condition, the generation of prosthetic
geometries and new morphologies acts as a catalyst for innovation. Maybe this is the
right time, in the evolution of 21st century architecture, to study and adopt new forms and
technologies. The aura of optimism and the apparent financial success of the new
building boom seem to require fresh, daring architects and designers.

This urban mirage continues to spread out vertically and horizontally without any signs
of slowing down; it takes in/purports a vertical urbanism - giant atriums and spidery
passages among the towers – curiously set against a background of a sprawling
“nothingness,” the desert.

To the visitor, this cosmopolitan city might seem peculiar and hyperactive, with no
layering or apparent hierarchy. Its allure lies in its ability to adjust rapidly, in its
complexity, in its contradictions.

The city of Dubai represents the truly generic condition of the contemporary city. These
are places where history has been almost completely blotted out, where the terrain has
become completely artificial, where the urban tissues do not hold together beyond a
relatively short time. This type of generic city amounts to no more than the coexistence of
a number of apparently unconnected buildings that, by virtue of proximity, happen to
form an urban condition. A new phenomenon that takes place without architecture,
without extraordinary architects…

Perhaps the nearest analogy to the mode of production of this new type of city is
Photoshop, which creates collages of photographs and other digitized images, combining
and layering anything with anything, as though in an accumulation of objects of desire.
In this type of city, the notions of center and periphery have lost their validity. What is
more, it seems as though the city has lost its site, for it tends to be everywhere and
nowhere. This fragmented and collaged city, which is perpetually being made and remade
“a la carte,” is really a replica.
 Figure 3: Study of commercial spaces
Figure 4: Dubai’s islands

The city tends to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, because it has no urban
center or core. Dubai thrives on newness and bigness, in an act of ongoing self-stylization
and fantasy. Hence architecture is crucial, for it defines these elements. Little more than a
grand-scale “shopping mall,” the city is comprised of “mind-zone” spaces, and of airport-
like lobbies. In this “Theme Park"-orientated cityscape, there is no differentiation
between old and new. Everything is recent. Yet everything seems to point to the twin
towers of consumerism and tourism.

The city has lost its meaning but not its search to be spectacular, the impressive display
of staged buildings and iconic complexes. Here, architecture and interiors act as
interfaces to consumerism, to the act of purchasing, to the ephemeral experience. Interior
shopping spaces are ever larger, more luxurious and seductive. The advent of air-
conditioning liberated the architectural form and gave rise to a new set of formal
possibilities.

Figure 5: Dubai’s street bazaar

Dubai is a prototype of the new post-global city, which creates appetites rather than
solves problems. It is represented as consumable, replaceable, disposable and short-lived.
Dubai is addicted to the promise of the new: it gives rise to an ephemeral quality, a
culture of the “instantaneous.” Relying on strong media campaigns, new “satellite cities”
and mega-projects are planned and announced almost weekly. This approach to building
is focused exclusively on marketing and selling.

Constructed Leisure-land
Flying over Dubai, one may easily be confronted with a huge urban condition: a 21st
century and new diagrammatic urbanism, both as carpets over the land and as prosthetic
islands along the seashore. As a tourist, there is no need to travel to distant destinations,
to desolated islands. Islands are now close to shore, in a new typology of hydro-suburbia.
The island is the lowest form of spatial organization. Pure accumulation, it has an iconic
form and a certain perimeter and location. It can be reached by dramatic arriving
(compare here with Venice’s Lido and Florida’s Key West). The surface of the island
reveals everything there is, all contents; islands are fundamentally consistent and
predictable: they give an assurance of security. But they have potentials; they are
exclusive; they attract investors and tourists and they can sell. These are exotic islands,
the most media frenzied and newsiest islands in the world, isolated and made to stage the
grotesque, at a large scale that looks like no other architecture.

This exceptionality accords well with the mechanics of mass tourism. Once cities relied
on a specific confluence of raw materials, transportation routes, and labor to generate
industrial revenue; now cities rely on a different confluence of architectural fantasy,
slightly different transportation routes, and tourists to generate entertainment revenues.
As Briavel Holcomb points out in his essay “Marketing Cities for Tourism” (1999), in the
tourist realm “it is the consumer, not the product that moves. Because the product is
usually sold before the consumer sees it, the marking of tourism is intrinsically more
significant than the conventional case where the product can be see, tested, and compared
to similar products in situ. It means that the representation of place, the images created
for marketing, the vivid videos and persuasive prose of advertising texts, can be as
selective and creative as the marketer can make them – a reality check comes only after
arrival”.

Increasingly, the kind of contemporary architecture that simulates mass tourism has to be
not only photogenic but also telegenic – buildings that look striking in a sequence of
rapid-fire cuts or that stand out in a static shot behind the pretty features of a talking head.
Many buildings of this sort end up as backdrops.

The city sprawls out like an exponent of an algorithmically evolving pattern:

a Fractal Architecture with forms of increased perimeter and endless topological
variations, but remains as a 2-dimensional pattern, allowing very little for 3-dimensional
variety.

But in an over-organized world - a groaning, decrepit universe of systems - the shapeless

and the worthless have no value, a new allure. The diagram is free from constraints, from
selection, from the tyranny of style. Motivated by a desire for authentic experience of for
exotic places, for escape or spectacle, or simply by an urge for new knowledge, the
tourist leaves a familiar environment to view other locations. Today, as places
increasingly get restructured as spaces of consumption, and as tourist activities merge
with other mass-consumption practices, from shopping and sports to culture and
education, architecture is becoming an integral part of the conception and economy of
tourism, and vice versa.

Dubai’s recent development has put it on the map of iconic projects, of real estate
prospecting and holiday dream destinations. Yet what is missing is the visionary
realization of its architecture.

Figure 6: Dubai’s new cityscape

Historically, the origin of modern vacation time can be traced back to the 1930s, when
workers in France, for the first time, were given the right to twelve paid vacation days.
Today, tourism has become a “total lifestyle experience.”

Figure 7: Dubai as the “destination city”

The modern tourist resort is by definition a constructed one. The tourist’s perception
seems to have shifted away from the pictorial 18th century: there is no longer the desire
for the panoramic view. The excessively visual contemporary culture has made
everything look familiar. Contemporary tourists are looking for familiarity: they want to
feel at home in a strange place.

This has led to concentrated tourist infrastructures and mega-structure complexes

(containing hotel + apartments + mall + cinema + expo + anything goes), which are
clustered very close together. In this sense, architecture and landscape are part of a single
system, characterized by stratification and controlled spatial experience.

Dean MacCannell comments on the autonomy of the tourist world. The tourist trail opens
up a new set of sensory experiences. Potentially, the itinerary is wide open and
adventures lurk around every corner. Ideally, the sheer weight of the unknown results in a
full-blown sensory encounter with all aspects of passing built environment. Travel of this
sort starts to sound like the voyage of the Surrealists into the city as dreamscape, or the
concept of the derive, popularized by Guy Debord and the Situationists, a journey into
changing urban ambiances and their new psychic atmospheres. It becomes not only an
aesthetic pleasure but also an act of liberation.

While travel does resemble this description for some of us some of the time, an
overwhelming density of the unknown can also shut down our senses. It is hard to revel
in a streetscape at midnight when one is desperately trying to find a hotel with a vacancy..
For these reasons, many of us prefer to reduce the quantity of the unknown by booking
advance transportation, lodging, and even sightseeing excursions. Mass tourism cushions
the impact of arrival and enables the visitor to negotiate larger and potentially confusing
stretches of territory.

In mass tourism, a dose of familiarization is required. Whereas it was once uncommon to

shop for ordinary clothing items while on vacation, brand-name stores and outlets mall
have popped up all over the world. One buys not only souvenir but also personal and
household items, the identical kinds of shorts or running shoes available back home.
Similarly, with the spread of franchised restaurants and hotels, it is possible to eat and
sleep in circumstances that are remarkably alike, and tune into CNN almost everywhere.
Mass tourism is indeed like mass media. The lure of the new works best when the new is
both anticipated and well packaged. In 1925, in his essay “travel and dance”, Siegfried
Kracauer already remarked that tourists are prepared for foreign places though the perusal
of illustrated magazines. Nowadays, though coffee-table books, friends’ JPEGs,
television ads, and movie trailers, tourists are well prepped for on-site architectural
experiences. A profusion of tour guides, and especially Internet sites, launches the tourist
into touring weeks or months before the actual trip begins. What is striking about this
body of preparatory information is the degree to which issues of touring comfort and
efficiency take precedence over historical information about architecture or place.
From the airport to the air-conditioned bus to the four- or five-star hotel, package tourists
spend much of their time within a cocoon. They might as well be at home, or at the mall.
The orchestrated itineraries, with their chosen spots for lecturing, picture taking and
shopping, and their frequent driving ellipses over ignorable terrain are similar to the
experience of movies and television.
In Dubai there is little difference between holiday accommodation and housing.
Architectural programs are becoming fused and undifferentiated. The morphology of the
landscape and seascape is becoming fabricated to the point that it may soon be difficult to
differentiate between the natural and the constructed. Dubai’s natural beachfront is 45km
long. Artificial islands will add another 1,500km of beachfront, turning the coastline and
the city into an inexhaustible holiday resort. This constructed landscape, like a stage set,
provides edited scenes of adventure and entertainment.

No matter in which part of the world, whenever architecture is built from a tabula rasa –it
seems to show a penchant for a universal language of spectacle and the exoticism of the
new. It therefore might be useful top draw on another understanding of the exotic at this
point, and ask in what ways specific examples of architecture are elusive and other to the
city itself. This is also a way of asking how the exotic intervenes in the cultural politics of
global tourism.

To explore this further, one may look at some cities in particular –Shanghai, Beijing,
Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai – all popular tourist destinations that have been
transformed by new architecture. This is something that every tourist notices, in fact,
cannot help noticing, because new buildings are everywhere; so that whether or not
architecture as intended destination for tourism, it becomes a focal point. Most tourists
soon notice that there is something not quite right about these new buildings that appear
to try hard to look modern and in effect nondescript; there are either details missing, or
too many extraneous details, usually in the form of additions that attempt to assert a
“Chinese” identity for some, and an “Arabic” for Dubai – a form of exoticism.

Jean Baudrillard has analyzed contemporary culture though the figure of Disneyland,
thereby inserting a form of simulated architecture and tourism into the heart of his
definition of hyper-reality. Disneyland is presented as an imaginary kingdom, set aside
from the values of everyday. As such, it serves as a “prop” to make us believe that the
world outside is “real.” For Baudrillard, however, the world outside is not “real” but
“hyper-real,” and Disneyland is no different from that world. The logic of role-playing is
and theming is not limited to Disneyland. It has permeated the whole of the Western
society.

Everyday life is colonized by fantasy. It is dominated by escapist dreaming. Both the

“authentic” architectural icons, and the simulated architectural icons, such as Disneyland
or Las Vegas, are inscribed within the same logic of escapist dreaming.

Escapism is an ambivalent, even negative word when juxtaposed against realism or

authenticity. Yet insofar as we are sensate beings, we are inescapably escapists. All
animals escape when confronted by some sort of threat, when they are pushed. Human
are no different. What makes us different is that we are only pushed, but also pulled by
some preferred, imagined reality that is either already I existence, “out there,” to be
discovered, or is a possibility to be realized –that is, constructed. We escape from the
given to the desirable: theme parks, shopping malls, and the suburban developments.
Shopping malls have often been excoriated as a fantasy world of easy fulfillments.
Shopping Malls
To the visitor, Dubai might seem peculiar. It lacks historical identity: few traditional
buildings exist, and most of those are reconstructions. There is no core, no clear urban
evolution or hierarchy. Yet, this hyperactive city thrives in an unprecedented optimism.
The prospect of the “new,” high-quality life makes Dubai an addictive place, where all
points to one thing: consumerism. Urbanism and Architecture act as interfaces to trading,
purchasing, and deal-making.

Not unlike the typical American suburbia, Dubai is experienced by car. Its hot and humid
climate, especially during the summer months, makes it almost impossible to engage in
outdoor activities. Air-conditioned mega-malls are the evening boulevards that draw
crowds of all nationalities. Shopping is arguably the last remaining form of public
activity, replacing almost every aspect of urban life. Even airports have become wildly
profitable by converting travelers into consumers.

Air conditioning transformed almost all interior spaces to retail spaces, by providing the
visitor/consumer with the necessary comfort. The escalator provided the shopper with a
means of effortlessly traversing the rapidly expanding distances, of scaling the heights of
commercial environments. Even nature has been systematically reinvented, so that it can
survive within the increasing artificiality of these new endless interiors.

The artificial is seen as a more desirable alternative to the natural. A description from
1938 of a windowless store describes a retail space “free from the slightest daylight or
natural ventilation, thereby eliminating dust and at the same time creating better, air-
washed, mechanical ventilation and more uniform, pleasing artificial lighting results […]
In many ways the elimination of windows adds to the beauty and to the selling efficiency
of the store”.

In the mid-1950s, the relationship between air conditioning and shopping is

consummated in the “invention” of the shopping mall. Unlike the department store, the
mall is the first retail type to exist because of air conditioning.

Shopping could never have become effortless without air conditioning. Only air
conditioning can make windowless sealed interiorized and artificial environments feel
natural and comfortable. Along with the escalator, engineered climates have enabled an
explosion in the size of interior space, creating environments that are becoming
increasingly divorced from the outside, and able to accommodate any range of human
activity in almost any combination.

By making interior spaces more large and comfortable, it has become increasingly
difficult to escape them. By combining activities that used to be dispersed in a single
space, air conditioning radically altered the way that time is spent in public.
Shopping time was never as prolonged as it is now. Department stores and shopping
centers began their steady encroachment on public activity by capitalizing upon comfort.
Therefore, by increasing the amount of time spent indoors, in comfort, the possibility of
spending is increased.

The liberation of the architectural form, from what used to be solely an environmental
shelter, has provided a set of new possibilities. Architectural form can now take any
configuration. It can address human issues not only of comfort, but also of social contact.
It is difficult to conceive of Postmodernism without referring to structuralism, and post-
structuralism in particular. Post-modern cities are caught up in the rapid changes brought
on by globalization. The need for a new interface is seen as a departure from the
paradigms of modernism. Already the cities are becoming profoundly heterogeneous and
non-linear.

Mystery with no history

Dubai began life as a small port and collection of barasti (palm frond) houses clustered
around the Creek. Unendowed with abundant fertile land, early 20th century settlers set
about making their living from the sea, concentrating on fishing, pearling and trading.
Commercial success coupled with the liberal attitudes of its rulers made the emirate
attractive to traders from India and Iran, who began to settle in the growing town. This
gave the city an early start before the explosion of wealth brought on by oil production in
the late 1960s.

The trajectory of the development of Dubai is reflected in its population, which has
grown fifteen-fold since 1969: from 60,000 then to well over one million today. It is
projected that, by 2010, Dubai’s tourist trade will accommodate around fifteen million
tourists per annum, serviced by more than 400 hotels. Comparisons are telling: in 2002,
Egypt, for example, had 4.7 million visitors, and Dubai 4.2 million. (The former, of
course, hosts ‘real history’, against the latter’s Las Vegas version – including, in the next
few years, the construction of a set of Pyramids in the vast theme park Dubailand.)

The emirate’s expansion has followed the Los Angeles model: new developments sprout
in the desert, beyond the older cores of Deira and Bur Dubai, linked by freeways and ring
roads. The open spaces left in between are gradually filled with a lower-intensity, car-
dependent form of urban sprawl.

Figure 8: Dubai’s Waterfront development

Figure 9: Dubai: Fractal Architecture

Since Dubai has no real urban history, it has had to invent a variety of new urban
conditions. Using its transitory oil wealth, the emirate has built "free zone" areas,
promoted as clusters defined by economic liberalization, technological innovation, and
political transparency. Jebel Ali Free Zone, an industrial and trading hub, was followed in
the late 1990s by three sprawling industrial parks: Internet City, a bid to make Dubai the
Arab world's IT hub; Media City, which aspires to replace Cairo as the Middle East's
media capital while broadcasting the emirate's vision of openness; and Dubai
International Financial Center (DIFC), a stock market headquarters meant to match those
of Hong Kong, London and New York.

While the desert is usually considered barren and worthless, Dubai’s “empty quarter” has
unique real estate value, thanks largely to two companies: Emaar Properties (founded
1997) and government-owned Nakheel. Among many residential projects, Emaar is
currently developing the 3.5km-long Dubai Marina behind the existing Jumeirah
beachfront hotels. A high-rise city-within-a-city and home to more than 40,000 residents,
it is set to become the focus of the New Dubai. Nakheel has become synonymous with
The Palm, Jumeirah, a 5km-long, reclaimed island. Other Palms and islands are currently
being ”planted,” in the massive undertaking of transplanting the desert into the sea. The
latest project, Dubai Waterfront, will not only add 375km of new beachfront but will
include the largest man-made canal carved out of the desert. By 2002, when freehold
property rights were established in Dubai, allowing foreigners to buy property for the first
time, the stage had been set for a real estate boom.

Dubai is turning into a huge business-meet-leisure park. In the desert, “Dubailand” is

being built – a $19bn theme park twice the size of Disneyworld in Florida. The plan also
involves the creation of Dubai as a city for 10m people, compared with the current
population of 1.5m. Its free enterprise zone is booming, as is its stock exchange (up
1,200% in two and a half years with stocks valued at $253bn). The amount of money
raised from initial public offerings will have hit $15bn in the past 12 months. Hundreds
of luxury hotels are being built and many hundreds of thousands of flats and luxury
homes aimed at housing the rich, the retired and the tourists as well as the immigrant
workers tasked with making his dream reality.

The paradox of the Prototype City

If Rome was the “Eternal City” and New York’s Manhattan the apotheosis of 20th
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 the sea.

Figure 10: Dubai’s vision of it’s future

Yet, while Dubai is perhaps becoming architecturally the ultimate fantasy city, it has not
provided many opportunities to innovative architects. Most of the new projects do not
push the boundaries of design innovation. They stay within a safe range of design styles
that are palatable to the masses.

This is the story of the 21st century new metropolis: generic, mega-city, impressive but
not original and above all: consumable.

References
Koolhaas, Rem, (1994) “The Generic City”, essay, Domus Magazine
Bijlsma, Like, (2004)“Editorial: Architecture and the Tourist Landscape”, OASE#64,
NAi Publications, Rotterdam
Davis, Mike, (2005) “Sinister Paradise: Does the Road to the Future End at Dubai?”,
essay, www.omdispatch.com
Augé, Marc, " Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity", Verso.