"walt disney meets albert speer on the shores of araby"

NOTHING YOU HAVEN'T HEARD before -- but I came across a good article from a while back by Mike Davis on Dubai and its eccentricities, both awesome and terrifying.

The most interesting part -- and the most provocative, I thought -- is Davis's assertion that "The utopian character of Dubai, it must be emphasized, is no mirage," which is to say that the city's boom is actually the result of a carefully planned and carefully executed experiment. It's a unique reading of the whole Dubai phenomenon as a misguided, perverse utopia-gone-wrong that makes us reconsider the very concept of utopia itself. Sure, Dubai imagines (and, indeed, constructs) itself as an alternate, better future. But the question is: better for whom? If we now live in an age when "utopia" can now be realized, the stakes become that much greater.

Think about it.


link: "Sinister Paradise: Does the Road the Future End at Dubai?" by Mike Davis (from TomDispatch.com)