The Wrongologist

The Wrongologist spent 4 days in Dubai last
week. He was invited to speak at the American University in Dubai. Mission Accomplished.
The student body is mostly from Arab countries. Their demeanor is similar to that
of students everywhere. The 8th Dubai Corporate Games, a large amateur athletic
competition between corporate teams was underway on campus. Students attended,
cheered and ate fast food, just like anywhere in the US. Hip-hop music was
playing from boom boxes. We saw this sign in the University cafeteria:

One of the trip objectives was to see if either
Turkey (see the Wrongologist’s Turkey column here)
or Dubai could be a model for the countries struggling for answers after the
early optimism surrounding the Arab Spring.

Four days does not create expertise, but here
are a few impressions: Dubai is a global
city. It is a business and cultural hub of the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf
region. Above all, the city is very modern and very clean, with no visible
signs of trash. It is the most centrally located city of the jet age and is
whitewashed of things like religious extremism, tough immigration laws, pesky
taxes or real-estate restrictions that might impede the flow of money into the
city.

Daniel
Brook, in his book, A
History of Future Cities, (Norton, 2013) writes a history of four cities;
St. Petersburg, Mumbai, Shanghai and Dubai. These cities were intended to be
venues for the world’s most ambitious organizations and people. They grew and
prospered, in most cases beyond what their country accomplished. Brook says
they are object lessons for the world we live in now:  

Brook
tells us that the growing class of the rich and their associated service
providers now jet from Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Geneva, London and New York, barely noticing the difference. Dubai
is an example of that: It has the look and feel of Las Vegas, another desert
city of high rise glass-walled buildings and neon. Dubai today is home to many
innovative, large high-rise buildings, including the world’s tallest building du jour, the Burj Khalifa.

The
nightly fountain show in the Burj Khalifa’s artificial lake is similar to the water
and light show outside the Bellagio in Las Vegas, although the fountains in
Dubai perform the Arabic Hair Dance or the Swinging Cane Dance, as opposed to “Fly
Me to the Moon” or “Viva Las Vegas”.

In some
ways Dubai is architecture school gone wild. All sorts of building concepts have
been executed, along with man-made islands, indoor ski hills and skating rinks
inside large shopping malls that include all of the global franchise stores.

Dubai has 2.1
million people, including a large expatriate community, with much of its
residential real estate market driven by wealthy expat buyers from China and
elsewhere in the Middle East, or by the not-as-wealthy European and American
expats, who are renters of large, western-style apartments. A 2012 study found that Emiratis
comprised a tiny 2% of the labor force. So expats come in many forms:
Indians and Filipinos predominate in taxis and domestic jobs, while an Italian restaurant
where we had dinner was staffed predominantly by Italians who were on one-year
contracts to work both the front of the room and the kitchen. We saw many
Russians shopping in the malls. Construction jobs are held by Africans,
Pakistanis and south Asians.

A famous
expat is Pervez Musharraf, deposed former president of Pakistan, who announced
that he is returning to Pakistan after 4 years self-imposed exile in Dubai.
That was tough duty.

Brook
points out that Dubai seized its moment in the 1970’s under the leadership of
Sheikh Mohammed, by building extraordinary hotels and office buildings long
before there were enough businesses or people to fill them. It then took off in
the post-9/11 environment by being the most important safe haven for people and
money in the Middle East.

Its infrastructure
is new and spectacular, with a stunning metro that is reasonably inexpensive, although
not available on a 24×7 basis. It is the longest driverless metro system in the
world, covering 46 miles of track. The station names could be from a sci-fi
novel: Media City, Internet City, Knowledge City and Health Care City. You can
even buy a ticket to Energy. These sectors of Dubai are established to create a
nexus of similar businesses in a given area.

The principal
thoroughfare, the Sheikh Zayed Road, is a 12 lane highway without potholes, (America
take notice) but not without traffic jams at rush hour. The airport departure
terminal is sleek and modern:

The Arrivals
Terminal is not so modern or different from elsewhere.

In
closing, in the past 10 days the Wrongologist visited two secular-leaning Muslim
countries, Turkey and Dubai. Both are thriving economically, making them quite
different from the Arab countries currently slogging through the Arab Spring.

Turkey is an
old democracy which, along with Indonesia, represent the only true democracies
among Muslim countries. Both have growing economies. Dubai is ruled by a Sheikh
and his family. Its economy is growing, but its people largely live on a
government stipend, since so few of them are employed.

Are either
of these countries models for the rest of the Arab world? Turkey at least in Ankara
and Istanbul, is an amalgam of Europe and Asia, of Islam and Christianity. It
was always a part of both worlds, and it is hard to see it as a repeatable
model for any other Middle Eastern country.

Dubai is 99%
Muslim, excluding the expats. It is multicultural and capitalist. Can Dubai be
the model for the rest of the Middle East? No. It succeeds by being secular on
the surface and ruled primarily by the laws of commerce. It is much like
Singapore: A city-state with inflexible social rules, but flexible business
rules.

It represents
the worst of wealth-based modernity, compelling, clean and soulless. If there truly
is a pivot toward Asia in the coming 50 years, Dubai along with Shanghai may be
the New York and London of the 21st century.

The
British glam-rock group, ABC said it best: “I’ve seen the future, I can’t
afford it”.

(ABC-“How to be a Millionaire”-1985)