n various parts of the world, national regimes use buildings and urban infrastructure to foster regional power, exercise world economic and symbolic impact, and impress indigenous citizens of their own significance. Such is the case among cities of the Persian Gulf—particularly Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Doha—where we presently focus. Drawing as well on other urban zones for occasional comparison, we outline how a process of creating a distinctive type of cities can simultaneously constitute the reality of nation. Central to the effort is capacity to mobilize international architects, access wealth, and deploy labor for ambitious and exceptional projects.
Buildings can show off wealth and power. That’s why the West got spectacular palaces and cathedrals. But in capitalist systems, underlying economic forces have often proven decisive in the making of cities. Commercial and industrial towns and metropoles of Europe and North America ultimately grew in response to the buying and bartering within or nearby in league, of course, with colonial exploitations over much of the rest of the world. Showy things—if not palaces, then bridges, towers, dams and other geo-features of industrial power—came about as a collateral consequence of such trade. Sometimes, as the term “industrial design” would suggest, such constructions were artfully finessed, but that was always secondary to commercial functioning.
New York’s greatness is perhaps the most prominent case of such a mix: factories, office skyscrapers and, yes, some symbolic glories—like the world-inspiring Statue of Liberty. The skyscrapers were pushed up by business-related interests responding to market forces, including crowded districts nearby. Buildings grew higher as land prices surged. When successful, it all—including the aesthetic pleasures—could reverberate back to create still more financial value through reputation and tourism. Ultimately, an unleashed flow of immigrants, money, and energy drove New York to the top of the world city league.
The new cities of the Gulf arose quite differently. Much was due to happenstance—the accident of oil and gas being sudden, unexpected, and transformative. The grand edifices came about largely without industry (other than extractive) or most of the other appurtenances of contemporary urban economies. Even in the case of Dubai, which did have a heritage of maritime trade (and pearling, an aspect of other Gulf towns and villages as well), the bulk of the built environment does not derive from a funneling of market forces into urban development. Conditions have not been ripe for in situ entrepreneurial evolution. Civic initiative similarly recedes where there are no political parties and few local associations. With little opposition to get in the way, real estate assumes salience.
What is left on the land are thus not residues of market forces but of enactments for country-creation—what we term “nationscapes.” The dynamic resembles, at least in physical terms, building out a capital—as happened with Washington DC, Brasilia, or Chandigarh. But in those cases, the urban apparatus, however richly endowed with symbolic authority, was primarily accessory to national development, not central to it. As a helpful vestigial feature, Gulf sites, not rich in prior visual particulars, are sets to stage a nation. Structures can be built, at least initially, with nothing around them—no mountains, outcroppings, or even trees. Some western architects marveled at having access to such “a perfect clean slate.”
Designers of the Gulf buildings (and connected engineering firms) have been drawn in from across the world, with a heavy bias toward the already branded, which has meant well-established U.S. and European starchitects. The ability to import top drawer operators bespeaks the larger capacity to buy, with pride, much else. Once reputation gets consolidated, say, by building the tallest skyscraper in the world or the most spectacular museum, similar real estate competences can be marketed internationally and exported to other cities, sometimes with a Gulf brand attached.
Prevailing conventions of architectural photography can enhance the effect. Buildings are shot to accentuate their stand-alone sculptural qualities, stripping away “distraction.” Excised are sheds, trucks, taxis, or police vehicles. Workers, including those maintaining the buildings, roadways and landscaping, are not present. Images of skylines (the other important photo-as-product) similarly omit particulars that might remind of the extractions needed to have created them. The cleaned-up results go on the web to attract tourists, investors, and additional clients for the architects.
What may have been built and photographed to impress the world also impresses the locals. We learn, thanks to ethnographic work by Asher Ghertner on urban India and his aptly titled book, Rule by Aesthetics, that the hoi polloi may take pride in what rises around them, even when, as in his Delhi study, his interlocutors are talking about buildings that displaced them from their own homes.
The places where the national aspirations come visibly together in the urban Gulf are not the grand mosques, but the grand shopping malls. Wall-to-wall global logos cover vast floor areas and rise multi-stories. Among citizens, there is strong brand awareness. Acquiring (foreign) goods further serves, perhaps ironically, to bond citizens to the state as well as to one another. For citizens, the glittering availability of goods signals cosmopolitan arrival. For privileged foreigners, it assures Arab normality. In stupefying incongruence with local conditions (summer temperatures are often well above 100F), there are indoor skating rinks and ski slopes (the largest in the world is at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates); beyond recreational value, such marvels display national triumph over a hostile environment.
Among other acquisitions is a strong body of museums, nearly all from the global marquee architects. The Gulf region previously lacked both publicly accessible art “collections” or the very idea of creating them. The museum itself is an import, sometimes based on long-term loans but also advanced by hugely ambitious purchasing programs. Abu Dhabi has grouped a number of its art institutions on an island now called “Saadiyat” (“happiness” in Arabic). The island is home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi (Jean Nouvel) and soon to be joined by a Guggenheim (Frank Gehry). In preparation nearby is the country’s “premier” Zayed National Museum, developed with the British Museum and designed by Norman Foster. NYU Abu Dhabi (Rafael Viñoly), also on Saadiyat, has been open and running for several years, and a branch of the Sorbonne finds a home in another part of the city.
Qatar has its own impressive cultural array, with its Museum of Islamic Art (I.M. Pei) set off as a peninsula into the sea. The sister of the current ruling Emir (and head of the Qatar Museums Authority) aims to make Qatar “the Mecca of Museums.” Qatar also has campuses of ten different Western universities—including Carnegie-Mellon, Northwestern, and HEC Paris—located on a kind of giant campus of campuses. Their handsome presence asserts, in a world-inviting way, a belonging of science and culture. What goes on inside the buildings is less important and indeed is sometimes, like in a notorious instance of an NYU Abu Dhabi student-organized drag show, something that needs to be contained.
Safer for domestic consumption is sport, although here as well, the players along with the heritage do not derive from the local. Events are designed to attract tourists and media attention. Doha sponsored the “Asian Games” of 2006 and is currently developing massive infrastructure to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup; Abu Dhabi and Bahrein have Formula One. Falconry, a sport throughout the Gulf is an important signifier of nation; a falcon image dominates the national seal and thus appears at ceremonial entry points to public buildings, although the bird itself has to be imported because of the harsh climate.
Urban sprawl permeates life. For citizens, large single-family houses are taken for granted as are domestic staffs to service them. In official reaction against prior nomadic existence, houses (more modest ones in earlier times) were, in Ahmed Hashim’s phrase, tools with which to “build the nation”. Heavily trafficked freeways are punctuated with billboards honoring the sheiks’ leadership and wisdom. Fencing and bountiful landscaping obscure unsightly elements. Dormitory like camps for workers are located out of view. Foreigners, heavily drawn from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other poor Asian countries, make up to 90% of the population. Present under temporary work permits, lower income workers cannot be accompanied by family members. Ethnic and cultural “diversity,” of a sort, is thus enfolded as national practice.
For citizens, tourists, and well-off ex-pats, the conspicuous pleasantness of Gulf city life helps counter any lingering notions of backwardness, regional tension, or danger. It is all done with attentiveness to global narratives of what makes for great cities—including in-vogue concepts of creativity, best practices, sustainability, and even social inclusion (the latter is among recent publicly-stated policy goals). Such narratives, made without irony (even in Saudi Arabia) leave the buildings undisturbed as signals of benign nationhood. The exposure of such national imaginaries is amplified by international trade fairs, conferences, and art exhibitions. The impressive facts of attainment—highest building, largest fountain, indoor skiing—plus the iconic scenography, are seductive. Officials and functionaries from nations with weak economies and very different political and social structures are striving to imitate some of the Gulf city strategies. But with fewer resources and weaker governing capacity, they risk deep debt, corruption, and construction of buildings that, reflecting misplaced ambition, presage resource waste, and social turmoil.
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Building a Nationscape: The Showcase Cities of the Gulf
Dubai Fountains, at the foot of the Burj Khalifa and adjacent to Dubai Mall, are the world’s largest choreographed fountains (2015). Photo by Michele Nastasi.
June 1, 2020
I
n various parts of the world, national regimes use buildings and urban infrastructure to foster regional power, exercise world economic and symbolic impact, and impress indigenous citizens of their own significance. Such is the case among cities of the Persian Gulf—particularly Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Doha—where we presently focus. Drawing as well on other urban zones for occasional comparison, we outline how a process of creating a distinctive type of cities can simultaneously constitute the reality of nation. Central to the effort is capacity to mobilize international architects, access wealth, and deploy labor for ambitious and exceptional projects.
Buildings can show off wealth and power. That’s why the West got spectacular palaces and cathedrals. But in capitalist systems, underlying economic forces have often proven decisive in the making of cities. Commercial and industrial towns and metropoles of Europe and North America ultimately grew in response to the buying and bartering within or nearby in league, of course, with colonial exploitations over much of the rest of the world. Showy things—if not palaces, then bridges, towers, dams and other geo-features of industrial power—came about as a collateral consequence of such trade. Sometimes, as the term “industrial design” would suggest, such constructions were artfully finessed, but that was always secondary to commercial functioning.
New York’s greatness is perhaps the most prominent case of such a mix: factories, office skyscrapers and, yes, some symbolic glories—like the world-inspiring Statue of Liberty. The skyscrapers were pushed up by business-related interests responding to market forces, including crowded districts nearby. Buildings grew higher as land prices surged. When successful, it all—including the aesthetic pleasures—could reverberate back to create still more financial value through reputation and tourism. Ultimately, an unleashed flow of immigrants, money, and energy drove New York to the top of the world city league.
The new cities of the Gulf arose quite differently. Much was due to happenstance—the accident of oil and gas being sudden, unexpected, and transformative. The grand edifices came about largely without industry (other than extractive) or most of the other appurtenances of contemporary urban economies. Even in the case of Dubai, which did have a heritage of maritime trade (and pearling, an aspect of other Gulf towns and villages as well), the bulk of the built environment does not derive from a funneling of market forces into urban development. Conditions have not been ripe for in situ entrepreneurial evolution. Civic initiative similarly recedes where there are no political parties and few local associations. With little opposition to get in the way, real estate assumes salience.
What is left on the land are thus not residues of market forces but of enactments for country-creation—what we term “nationscapes.” The dynamic resembles, at least in physical terms, building out a capital—as happened with Washington DC, Brasilia, or Chandigarh. But in those cases, the urban apparatus, however richly endowed with symbolic authority, was primarily accessory to national development, not central to it. As a helpful vestigial feature, Gulf sites, not rich in prior visual particulars, are sets to stage a nation. Structures can be built, at least initially, with nothing around them—no mountains, outcroppings, or even trees. Some western architects marveled at having access to such “a perfect clean slate.”
Designers of the Gulf buildings (and connected engineering firms) have been drawn in from across the world, with a heavy bias toward the already branded, which has meant well-established U.S. and European starchitects. The ability to import top drawer operators bespeaks the larger capacity to buy, with pride, much else. Once reputation gets consolidated, say, by building the tallest skyscraper in the world or the most spectacular museum, similar real estate competences can be marketed internationally and exported to other cities, sometimes with a Gulf brand attached.
Prevailing conventions of architectural photography can enhance the effect. Buildings are shot to accentuate their stand-alone sculptural qualities, stripping away “distraction.” Excised are sheds, trucks, taxis, or police vehicles. Workers, including those maintaining the buildings, roadways and landscaping, are not present. Images of skylines (the other important photo-as-product) similarly omit particulars that might remind of the extractions needed to have created them. The cleaned-up results go on the web to attract tourists, investors, and additional clients for the architects.
What may have been built and photographed to impress the world also impresses the locals. We learn, thanks to ethnographic work by Asher Ghertner on urban India and his aptly titled book, Rule by Aesthetics, that the hoi polloi may take pride in what rises around them, even when, as in his Delhi study, his interlocutors are talking about buildings that displaced them from their own homes.
The places where the national aspirations come visibly together in the urban Gulf are not the grand mosques, but the grand shopping malls. Wall-to-wall global logos cover vast floor areas and rise multi-stories. Among citizens, there is strong brand awareness. Acquiring (foreign) goods further serves, perhaps ironically, to bond citizens to the state as well as to one another. For citizens, the glittering availability of goods signals cosmopolitan arrival. For privileged foreigners, it assures Arab normality. In stupefying incongruence with local conditions (summer temperatures are often well above 100F), there are indoor skating rinks and ski slopes (the largest in the world is at Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates); beyond recreational value, such marvels display national triumph over a hostile environment.
Among other acquisitions is a strong body of museums, nearly all from the global marquee architects. The Gulf region previously lacked both publicly accessible art “collections” or the very idea of creating them. The museum itself is an import, sometimes based on long-term loans but also advanced by hugely ambitious purchasing programs. Abu Dhabi has grouped a number of its art institutions on an island now called “Saadiyat” (“happiness” in Arabic). The island is home to the Louvre Abu Dhabi (Jean Nouvel) and soon to be joined by a Guggenheim (Frank Gehry). In preparation nearby is the country’s “premier” Zayed National Museum, developed with the British Museum and designed by Norman Foster. NYU Abu Dhabi (Rafael Viñoly), also on Saadiyat, has been open and running for several years, and a branch of the Sorbonne finds a home in another part of the city.
Qatar has its own impressive cultural array, with its Museum of Islamic Art (I.M. Pei) set off as a peninsula into the sea. The sister of the current ruling Emir (and head of the Qatar Museums Authority) aims to make Qatar “the Mecca of Museums.” Qatar also has campuses of ten different Western universities—including Carnegie-Mellon, Northwestern, and HEC Paris—located on a kind of giant campus of campuses. Their handsome presence asserts, in a world-inviting way, a belonging of science and culture. What goes on inside the buildings is less important and indeed is sometimes, like in a notorious instance of an NYU Abu Dhabi student-organized drag show, something that needs to be contained.
Safer for domestic consumption is sport, although here as well, the players along with the heritage do not derive from the local. Events are designed to attract tourists and media attention. Doha sponsored the “Asian Games” of 2006 and is currently developing massive infrastructure to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup; Abu Dhabi and Bahrein have Formula One. Falconry, a sport throughout the Gulf is an important signifier of nation; a falcon image dominates the national seal and thus appears at ceremonial entry points to public buildings, although the bird itself has to be imported because of the harsh climate.
Urban sprawl permeates life. For citizens, large single-family houses are taken for granted as are domestic staffs to service them. In official reaction against prior nomadic existence, houses (more modest ones in earlier times) were, in Ahmed Hashim’s phrase, tools with which to “build the nation”. Heavily trafficked freeways are punctuated with billboards honoring the sheiks’ leadership and wisdom. Fencing and bountiful landscaping obscure unsightly elements. Dormitory like camps for workers are located out of view. Foreigners, heavily drawn from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other poor Asian countries, make up to 90% of the population. Present under temporary work permits, lower income workers cannot be accompanied by family members. Ethnic and cultural “diversity,” of a sort, is thus enfolded as national practice.
For citizens, tourists, and well-off ex-pats, the conspicuous pleasantness of Gulf city life helps counter any lingering notions of backwardness, regional tension, or danger. It is all done with attentiveness to global narratives of what makes for great cities—including in-vogue concepts of creativity, best practices, sustainability, and even social inclusion (the latter is among recent publicly-stated policy goals). Such narratives, made without irony (even in Saudi Arabia) leave the buildings undisturbed as signals of benign nationhood. The exposure of such national imaginaries is amplified by international trade fairs, conferences, and art exhibitions. The impressive facts of attainment—highest building, largest fountain, indoor skiing—plus the iconic scenography, are seductive. Officials and functionaries from nations with weak economies and very different political and social structures are striving to imitate some of the Gulf city strategies. But with fewer resources and weaker governing capacity, they risk deep debt, corruption, and construction of buildings that, reflecting misplaced ambition, presage resource waste, and social turmoil.
