52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Chapter 22: Dubai (and Part 2 of Turkey & Egypt)
In Which I — Spoiler Alert — Really, Really, Really Do Not Like The Vibes Of Dubai, And Consider What It Tells Us About World-Class Cities
My first warning sign for how I would feel about Dubai was the SkyTrain.
Technically, the name of the city’s rapid transit system is Dubai Metro. But with a elevated driverless system stopping every kilometre or two, it was effectively the same as my SkyTrain back home.
Only it wasn’t, because the great tradition on the SkyTrain is to get in the front car and sit in the front seat and smile broadly as you hurtle above the ground like a wizard conductor, seeing the region unfold in all its mountains and towers and single-family neighbourhoods and whatever the heck that weird industrial area in northern Burnaby is.
Naturally, when I paid for a ticket to get from my airport hotel to the giant mall, I excitedly went to the front car and sat at the front seat.
After about 30 seconds, I realized things were very wrong. The car was almost empty and there were big signs in neon yellow everywhere.
It turned out, I was breaking the law — to sit at the front of the rapid transit system in Dubai, you have to pay a hefty extra fee, or face a $40 fine.
At the next stop, I got off and ran back to a normal car, which was unsurprisingly packed.
It was my first experience of the two Dubais. It wasn’t the last.
I went to Dubai after my civilizational jaunt in nearby countries partly because it worked well as a connecting point to the next chapter of my trip, and partly because it was just so darn intriguing.
The story of Dubai’s transformation has been well told by this point, but that doesn’t make it any less fascinating, particularly when one is doing a survey of important cities across the world.
A tiny British protectorate previously known for fishing and the gold trade, it merges with other protectorates along the Persian gulf in the late 1960s — around the same time that oil is first struck in the region — to become part of the United Arab Emirates.
Dubai becomes the biggest city, and once the oil money really starts flowing, it gets transformed over 20 or 30 years into a glistening metropolis with the world’s tallest building (the 830-metre tall Burj Khalifa) and artificial islands and massive theme parks and tourist attractions everywhere.
Because of its relatively secular nature compared to the rest of the region, it becomes a massive hub for trade and transportation and wealthy multinationals, going from from 370,000 people in 1985 to nearly ten times that today, with nearly 85% of those folks from other countries.
And because of the country’s immense wealth, cosmopolitan nature and desire for international influence, much money and effort goes into building the “city of the future,” one the cutting edge of technology and architecture and and innovation.
Well, if this is the future, the future sucks.
Dubai was my least favourite city of this entire trip, full stop, and was completely unappealing in so many different ways.
Yes, it’s shiny and modern and safe and the technology works and you can go to beautiful air-conditioned theme parks and malls and see giant fish and go to a hockey rink and get every type of cuisine imaginable in the food court, and then watch the light and fountain show next to the Burj Khalifa, and it is all very fun in a very surface level way, like when you’ve had two beers at a party full of generically attractive strangers and everyone is being nice to you and the particulars of the conversation or the people don’t really matter.
That was day one in Dubai. Day two was trying to navigate the city and explore neighbourhoods. It was a radically different experience.
There are highways and rapid transit, yet the rapid transit is just two lines and the many highways are always clogged. Air-conditioned corridors are the main form of walking, in part because of the heat and in part because the highways constantly break up different parts of the city, making organically wandering a neighbourhood close to impossible.
As a result, the street energy is negligible, pushed instead to the malls and theme parks. And look, I have a fondness for both of those things. Yet if that’s all you have, it makes a city a tad rudimentary, even in its bigness.
All of this culminated when I went to Souk Madinat, a recreation of a traditional bazaar, where the air was cool and the souvenirs cost double what they did in other cities and where one of the merchants in the fake stands was a Cinnabon.
What is a world-class city anyhow?
If I had to sum it up in a sentence, after all these months thinking about it, I would go with this.
“A community where all people can live and get around comfortably, with a interesting mix of things to experience that are uniquely tied to the place and its history, culture and geography”
Dubai is not that. Dubai is one idea — let’s take the most gaudy parts of Las Vegas but make them bigger and remove the camp — expressed again and again and again, with little regard for anything else. It is artificial, exclusionary, unwalkable, a parody of a post-national utopia.
And that’s all without mentioning the whole labour thing.
It makes sense why Dubai is a place for the wealthy who tend to travel a lot: you can make it your home base for comfort and safety and no income taxes and getting what you need conveniently (assuming you have a car), and then go somewhere else when you want to experience reality.
I’m glad I went once, because it’s a very specific vision of the future that is worth thinking about.
It’s also a good reminder that the future is always being shaped, and the only way to change that is to actively work towards an alternative vision.
Part of the reason Dubai was fascinating was the massive gap between its ambitions and its reality, but part of it was how it was such a contrast to the city I had just spent five days in.
Cairo’s streets are vibrant, but there is poverty everywhere. Everywhere you look there is history and museums and mosques and authenticity, but there is also constant harassing from touts and the risk of assault for women. The gridlock of endless highways is replaced with the choose your own adventure terrordome of virtually no traffic lights or rules of the road.
Dubai is 35 square kilometres of elaborately crafted shiny mediocrity created over 30 years. Cairo is 453 square kilometres of organically sprawling chaos created over 1500 years.
I enjoyed Cairo more, partly because of all the amazing museums and partly because Morocco taught me how to deal with people aggressively offering “help” for you every 15 metres.
By any reasonable measure though it’s a deeply flawed city.
The Egyptian government’s solution to solving Cairo’s problems? Build a brand new Cairo.
“New Administrative Capital” has been under construction for close to a decade, a complete city being built from scratch about 15 kilometres to the east of the Cairo area’s present outskirts.
Right now its population is around five thousand people, but there are plans to have six million eventually. Government offices are finished and people are working in them, along with some businesses. There are long wide streets and plazas and statues and monuments, befitting for a grand city, with virtually nobody there to enjoy it.
So I took a cab ride.
I’ve had plenty of surreal sights this year. Wandering around a lavishly decorated town square that’s completely finished and completely empty is up there. So was passing by a highway with billboards advertising dozens of international university branches that haven’t been built.
There are a number of examples in the past century of governments building brand new cities, Brasília being perhaps the most prominent. In this case, will New Administrative Capital (no, it doesn’t have a name yet) succeed to alleviate Cairo’s traffic nightmares and decaying streetscapes?
“Who is going to live there?” asked my cab driver when I put the question to him during our 90-minute ride.
“They have to do something, but what if it’s just the rich leaving and the rest of us stuck in old Cairo.”
TV reporters hate to end stories with the phrase “time will tell” because we’re supposed to give some resolution to the information we’ve just presented.
In this case it’s appropriate: people will actually move in, and then it’ll take years to assess its success.
But going to Dubai right after underlined for me that all the money and all the new buildings can’t create a soul.
I don’t want this chapter to be entirely downcast, and luckily it doesn’t need to be: the big city prior to Dubai and Cairo was quite interesting and organic.
I’ve already gushed about Istanbul’s cultural treasures that stemmed from its unique transition point between “west” and “east” for thousands of years.
Aside from that diverse history though, there’s a great combination of trams and subways that make getting around the city of 16 million people decently manageable. Interesting neighbourhoods that have very different vibes based on their demographics and time of development. A legitimately multicultural place, and all the cultural dynamism that tends to create.
Plus the endless cats are very cool.
Poverty and inflation are major issues, and causing significant headaches for President Erdoğan’s semi-autocracy. The traffic is still bad, the air pollution is significant, and there are reasons why the city tends to score low is most international livability rankings.
Still, I left Istanbul feeling positive I could recommend it to most strangers — and not with the caveats of “only if you’re grotesquely curious” like Dubai, or “yes, but because of Pyramids” like Cairo.
A mixed bag, in other words. The earth is a mixed bag though, and if I had spent the entire year in immaculately livable places, I would be learning a lot less and feeling ennui a lot more.
I wasn’t thinking philosophically in Dubai’s massive airport at two in the morning though. Mostly, I was willing myself to stay awake so that I could minimize the effect of jet lag, as I prepared for my first transcontinental flight in five months.
North America, South America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East were fascinating to explore.
But it was time to see Asia, and to learn new things about the world.
And as it turned out, very quickly learn new things about myself.
Dubai was a disgusting city but great for those who worship obscene wealth. The "old city" tour was a cartoonish depiction of what it might have been like in days gone by, including an emaciated camel. The gold market was ugly - with stall after stall of bright gold jewelry. The architects must be enjoying building the gaudy highrise towers. Our 2 days there were not enjoyable although I thought it was hilarious to eat at New York Fries in that huge mall.
Ah, this is brilliantly observed. Dubai is a shiny thing to marvel at! … is a thing that many western voices have exclaimed, without mentioning the uncanny disturbed undercurrents. But ah, so many visits have been sponsored by the sheikhs. Including my own, 10 years ago (the airline/ tourism board).
This George Saunders article is nearly 20 years old but it is a phenomenal incisive read, seriously give it a look you will not be sorry: https://www.gq.com/story/george-saunders-on-dubai