Dubai building tomorrow's city today

Dubai

There certainly seems to be a pattern within human civilization that encourages each society to attempt to make their mark upon the world. Through the ages, such marks have come in many forms; the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Eiffel Tower of Paris have all represented something more significant and lasting than the mere practical purposes that each monument served. Through history, specifically what the criteria for judging a human creation as a wonder doubtlessly involves the fusion of artistic form, technological or engineering expertise, and sheer enormity. Accordingly, it should not be surprising that modern societies have made analogous testaments to their power, greatness, and audacity. The fact is that in the ancient world as well as in the modern world, people continue to be attracted to such dramatic demonstrations of human ingenuity; the result, particularly in the emerging global economy, is that modern wonders of the world possess the capacity to generate substantial profit for those bold enough to undertake them. The Palm Islands in Dubai fit this mold for the third millennium: they are grandiose, beautiful, and enormous; additionally, they promise to maintain Dubai's emerging economy well after the world's oil supply fails.

It is noteworthy that exactly what makes the Palm Islands in Dubai exceedingly attractive to tourists and foreign investors is that building and maintaining them is a gamble in the extreme. It is difficult to imagine a democratic nation making such a decisive and risky economic move or to imagine another governmental organization looking so far to the future. One major drawback of a democratic nation under a capitalistic economy is that short-term gains emerge as the primary impetus for change. Accordingly, western nations have not formulated realistic plans for major long-term dilemmas: no western nation has put forward an effective answer for supplying the world's power needs after fossil fuels begin to run out or an effective means to minimize the human influence on the global climate. Doubtlessly, this can be seen as a consequence of the sort-term demands upon capitalistic ventures as well as those upon individual political leaders, forced to worry about upcoming elections more than emerging issues half a century away. The advantage of having a Crown Prince, in this respect, is that they are forced to look towards maintaining their regimes on the scale of lifetimes. So, the fantastic scale upon which the Palm Island and the World Islands in Dubai have been organized must be perceived as a dramatic reaction to expansive trends in the global economy measured in upcoming decades.

The driving force that has ultimately resulted in the Palm Islands is the upcoming world energy problem. It has been estimated that the oil reserves within Dubai are likely to run out by 2016, should the world continue to consume oil at the rate reached by 1990. However, an additional trouble is that the world continues to consume fossil fuels at an exponential rate; as developing worlds act to catch-up with the western powers, they simultaneously act to increase global dependence upon oil. Also, western usages of electricity have continued to increase as internet technologies have caused industrial and domestic usages of electricity to steadily rise. The ultimate result is that as oil is beginning to run out, the world's consumption of oil is increasing at such a rate that even if immediate measures were taken to find alternate energy sources, the ongoing wave of consumption could not be ceased. Obviously, such doomsday proclamations fail to be congruous with the role that western politicians desire to fill; no one wants to be the leader to declare that a great cataclysm is about to fall upon the world. So, while most democratic nations see fit to debate the scientific validity of global warming and the projections regarding oil reserves, more despotic nations are able to act with more alacrity.

Accordingly, under the guidance of Crown Prince Shaikh Mohammad Bin

Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's coastline is undergoing a dramatic change in an attempt to compensate for the lost income that will befall the nation around 2016. The Crown Prince is seeking an alternative way to generate this income; he wants Dubai to become the tourist capital to the world. In order to accomplish this he needs two things: a longer coastline, and a unique wonder to draw people interested in the rare accomplishments of mankind. The Palm Islands satisfy both of these demands by both increasing the length of the famous Dubai beaches by more than a factor of ten, and by simply being an aesthetic engineering feat. Ultimately, it is these practical demands for a thriving economy that has spurred the transformation of Dubai's coastline and promises to supply one of the wonders of the modern world.

Generally, the current problem with energy is both economic and environmental. Alternatives to oil must be found and incorporated into our existing systems of distribution to, first, reduce our dependence on a foreign and finite resource, and second, to cease the emission of harmful chemicals into our environment. A number of energy sources that are currently being offered by western politicians include: cold fusion, fuel cells, and biomass. Yet, these possibilities can be presently disregarded because none of them have yet been perfected or demonstrated to be cleaner, cheaper, safer, or more sustainable than any of the currently used methods. Certainly, it is possible that one or more of these options may be demonstrated to someday present real energy alternatives, but that day is not yet here. Cold fusion is still languishing in theoretical form; fuel cells require the costly process of generating pure hydrogen; and biomass resources have yet to significantly eliminate harmful byproducts. The most reasonable forms of energy to be utilized in the near future are natural gas, coal, and nuclear; with some -- limited -- room for wind, geothermal, solar, and hydroelectric.

Centrally, fundamental changes to the social order of the world are underway, and the approach of the Crown Prince of Dubai seems to reflect the differing capacities of political organizations to address these changes. This is not to say, of course, that prominent citizens of the Untied States and European nations have not urged democratic countries to look towards the future in similar ways. Richard Heinberg's book The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, for example, presents a comprehensive and insightful look into the fundamental way society has been structured for the past one-hundred and fifty years, and how our way of life now rests on the brink of monumental change. Simply put, the book discusses the role of oil in the world. However, unlike many of the book's predecessors, Heinberg makes sure that The Party's Over takes a broader point-of-view regarding global warming and avoids the drawbacks of finger-pointing. His argument is not centrally that our consumption of fossil fuels is leading to irreversible climate shifts -- although he acknowledges that it is -- and his argument is not that political conservatism and liberal economics have doomed the future of mankind. Instead, Heinberg takes a more historical perspective: he illustrates the age of industrialization as having stemmed from certain abundant energy sources, and that we now have very nearly reached the end of this particular social order. In other words, the progression of the industrial age has inevitably brought us to this point: the global climate will change, the social order will change, and there will be war. This is a bold line of reasoning, and it somehow seems more at home in nations with a decisive leader willing to drastically alter its economic base. Whereas, in the United States, it would be virtually impossible to find a leader willing to embrace such a point-of-view regarding world history, Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and his four sons have already undertaken the construction of the city of tomorrow today.

Broadly, this answers one of the pressing questions when discussing the Palm Islands of Dubai; namely: why Dubai? There are beautiful coastlines across the United States and other democratic nations that could potentially serve to build such a wonder of the modern world. However, undertaking this project, it would seem, is simply too risky to expect it to be agreed upon democratically. The cost, thus far, has been estimated at 1.8 billion dollars; far too much to have invested if it is presumed that oil resources are boundless -- which seems to be the position of the Bush administration and most of the U.S. government. "And a 10-billion dollar project to build a new city called Dubai Marina is already well underway. It is to house 100,000 people around a huge water basin within a decade." Also, the third addition to the Dubai coastline is intended to be a reconstruction of the world's continents: "The World is a heady $14 billion endeavor, consisting of 300 individual islands arranged to mimic the shape of the globe's landmasses."

Furthermore, it is not altogether apparent that building and maintaining these islands, from an engineering perspective, is realistic. Whereas the natural coastline of Dubai is constantly re-supplied with sand from the ocean currents, the artificially formed coastlines are continuously having their sands stripped away by the currents and deposited further downstream. This means that in order to preserve the Palm Island's beautiful shape, perpetual maintenance must be put into action. Ultimately, this means that the Dubai economy will fundamentally depend upon the flow of tourism because the initial gains from real-estate development will grind to a halt when real-estate ceases to be created. Perhaps this explains the ever-increasing scale upon which the artificial islands of Dubai are being created: real-estate sales have already made-up for much of the cost of creating the vulnerable islands. Nevertheless, once construction stops and oil reserves dry up, it will be upon the shoulders of international tourism that Dubai sustains the economic progress that has typified its past two decades of its development.

Still, it is difficult to dispel the notion that Dubai has become the center for such development because of its almost unimaginable advancement within the past quarter-century. Prior to the discovery of oil in the emirate, life had remained largely unchanged for the past millennium: "Until a decade or two ago, the dunes were inhabited by nomadic bedouin roaming with their flocks and herds. Today the nomads have all settled, in villages in the few fertile oases or valleys, or else in the city." Many of the more recent changes in Dubai have come about through the change of power: "When Sheikh Rashid, the architect of Dubai's success and unrivalled financial freedom, died in 1990, his son Sheikh Maktoum took the reins of power. The core of Maktoum's policies is economic freedom and the no-holds-barred promotion of Dubai, which makes the city a very fun place." So, although the lands of Dubai have been inhabited for at least three thousand years it has been recent changes in energy needs, coupled with individual leadership, which has transformed it into an economic oasis.

It is still worth notice that in many other nations, in which natural resources have begun to run low, privatization of these resources has become the capitalistic answer. Broadly, pressing problems and forebodings have brought forth one course of action which has been receiving substantial attention and backing in recent years: privatization and commodification. This is a product of the so called "Washington consensus" model of economics. Fundamentally, this is the notion that liberal market economics can be utilized to generate stable equilibriums with any number of commodities, including those that are essential to life. Water, for example, was first formally defined as a commodity in the "World Water Forum" in The Hague in March of 2000. And during the same time, at 2000 and 2002 world summits, numerous nations committed themselves to the reduction in the number of people who currently lack access to safe water by one-half by 2015 -- currently about 1.1 billion people drink contaminated water. Obviously, this is a bold and, perhaps, impossible undertaking for nations already struggling to meet their existing natural resource demands. So, it should not be surprising that the past fifteen years have seen exponential increases in the levels of privatization of natural resources throughout the planet: "In 1990, private water companies operated in 12 countries; today they are in nearly 100. And industry analysts expect the private drinking water market to grow from its current level of about $500 billion to about $3 trillion in just the next five years."

Many governments are simply unable to meet the needs of individuals and farmlands. "In Cairo, the poor pay vendors 40 times the real cost of delivery; in Karachi the figure is 83 times; and in parts of Haiti, 100 times, or a third of residents' income. Poor farmers in South Asia often surrender a large part of their crops to those who own pumps." In light of these facts, there are numerous benefits associated with privatizing natural resources. A problem that is rather easily solved by pricing is associated with wasteful usages. By ensuring a community a certain amount -- enough for subsistence -- but drastically increasing rates once this level is surpassed, water distributors in a handful of regions have been able to both limit excessive use and take into account low-income individuals who may lack the monetary capacity to pay. This problem generally rears itself in regions where water prices are unduly low -- like in the American southwest, for example. Demanding that water be absolutely free everywhere tends to breed excessive usage in locations where the actual cost of transporting water is significant. Professor Tony Allan, a specialist in Middle-East and North African resources at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London asserts, "Much of the trouble in arid places like Arizona and California lies with stupid water budgets that support a lot of irrigation. If you decide in hot country to allocate water to agriculture, irrigation will swallow up most of the available water." Eliminating such wasteful practices can be done by imposing more realistic costs upon them. Accordingly, both domestic and agricultural water is likely to be used more responsibly.

Essentially, water has become analogous to oil in the respect that current world populations have been putting strains upon both, and the manner with which the west has sought to answer depleted water resources is similar to the western approach to diminishing oil reserves. Put differently, it would seem the western faith in capitalistic mechanisms to naturally solve the difficulties of supply and demand fails to clearly apply to resources like oil and water -- resources that lay the very foundation of civilization. Along these lines, Heinberg argues, most western economists recognize that oil is a finite resource that will likely be depleted within fifty years; however, they simultaneously believe that market forces will simply provide a new energy source in place of the old. So, just as market forces can be expected to supply the ailing world with water, they can be expected to supply an energyless world with electricity.

It is not so much that the leaders of Dubai tend to disagree with the western assessment of natural resources as they have simply embraced the inevitability of the changing role of oil within the economy. It may be obvious that subjecting key components of the current world order to liberal economics does not promise stability -- with reference to the current Bolivian civil war -- so the Palm Islands of Dubai seem to offer one immutable economic alternative: tourism. In other words, tourism will remain a major source of income as long as there are people with the money to travel. This fact makes the construction of the Palm Islands a way to dodge the future problems associated with natural resource depletion. Consequently, the fact that a modern wonder of the world is growing out of a nation built upon a finite natural resource should also not be surprising; it is a reasonable fiscal move, given their present position.

The current liberal economy has been identified as the key player in the modern struggle for resources and the drastic reorganization of Dubai's coastline and economy. Contrasting this, many critics of liberal economies have identified imperialism as a necessary consequence of market forces -- powerful nations become able to exert economic and political control over weaker nations by injecting capital into them to draw on potential incomes. Traditional imperialism consists of the outright exploitation of foreign resources and workforces by first exercising military control, but neo-imperialism consists of the exploitation of foreign resources by corporations following the opening of foreign markets. Generally, both have been viewed as the negative consequences of a free market allowed to operate unchecked, and have generated numerous social backlashes: "The frequent observation that globalization is not global, meaning that processes and benefits associated with globalization are uneven throughout the world, is reinforced in this backlash."